by T. M. Logan
I pressed stop and then rewind to take it back. The tape whirred as it spun backwards, the digital counter on the screen running down. I glanced out of the window. From our bedroom you could see out to the poolside, where Sean had sat Daniel down on a sunlounger and was talking to him at length, the boy nodding solemnly every so often.
It hadn’t always been like this. When we had first brought Daniel home from hospital, six-year-old Lucy had been absolutely ecstatic to have a sibling – a real baby of her own to go along with the assortment of toy babies she lined up in her bed every day for feeding, stories and bath time. But by the time he had learned to talk – and answer back – the sibling novelty had worn off and they had settled into a relationship that veered between grudging tolerance and open warfare on a daily basis. Daniel delighted in winding her up and Lucy delighted in taking offence – even more so now she was a teenager. It was an exhausting combination.
But I didn’t want them to grow up apart, to be separated, to have to be ferried from one parent to the other and back again every weekend, or whatever way custody arrangements worked. And however much they fought, they would want to be together too. They belonged together.
The camera gave a click as the tape reached the beginning. I pressed play and Daniel’s grinning face appeared as he introduced the house tour.
‘Welcome to the big white villa on the hill. Our holiday house, in France,’ he added in the mock-serious tone of a TV presenter. ‘And welcome to Daniel’s video diary. We start today in my bedroom.’
In spite of myself and how low I was feeling, I couldn’t help but smile at his commentary as he chattered on, panning the camera around his room, the suitcase open on the bed, his books stacked neatly next to his little digital clock, his Lego superheroes on the bedside table. I knew, from his previous holiday videos, that he could go on like this for quite some time. I hit fast forward, watching as everything on screen speeded up and the images flashed past: the hallway, our bedroom, Lucy’s room and the others along the corridor, the stairs down into the games room, more stairs and what looked like a wine cellar, then up again, into the lounge and out onto the balcony, the images of Rowan and me on the first day here with the inevitable extreme close-up. The speeded-up image moved back into the lounge, jerking crazily up the stairs to the first floor, doors pushed open into more bedrooms, out to another balcony at the end of the hall, a shot of the grounds and the hills in the distance, another zooming close-up down by the double garage, and there was someone half-hidden behind a low white wall, then the shot swinging away and over to the infinity pool –
Wait. I jabbed the pause button, a strange tingling sensation at the back of my neck, then rewound the tape a minute or so and hit play.
Daniel’s commentary started up again as the camera panned over distant hills, shimmering in the heat haze.
‘And here we have some more boring countryside,’ his high little voice announced, ‘just loads of trees and hills and more boring trees really. Not very interesting. Not even a McDonald’s or a KFC anywhere.’
The camera zoomed out again, pulling right back to the grounds, the outhouse, a sweep across the roof of the double garage at the top of the driveway.
There. On the other side of a low wall.
The image caught Sean’s top half, from the chest upwards. He had sunglasses on and was talking to someone, smiling, holding his hands out to them. Whoever he was talking to was hidden behind the garage wall.
‘It’s Daddy,’ Daniel’s voiceover said on the tape. ‘Hello, Daddy!’
Sean seemed not to hear his son’s voice. He carried on talking earnestly to the person behind the garage, who was still hidden.
Come out, take a step forward so I can see you.
Come out.
‘Daddy’s gone deaf,’ Daniel grumbled to himself on the tape. ‘Typical.’
Just as the camera swung away again, Sean moved to embrace the mystery person and I saw a flash of something that made my breath catch in my throat.
I rewound the tape and pressed play again, my finger poised over the pause button.
On the camera’s little screen, Sean moved in for the embrace again.
I hit pause. There. There it was. A flash of long blonde hair, a face caught in profile for a fraction of a second. A face I knew only too well.
Jennifer.
36
It didn’t make sense. I had been fully expecting to see Rowan caught in the video with Sean. It was Rowan who was having an affair – according to her husband – and she was the one who’d had Sean’s wedding ring, who’d whispered to him at the beach. It should have been Rowan in the video, but it wasn’t.
Another thought edged out from the very darkest corner of my mind.
Perhaps it wasn’t just Rowan. Perhaps it was Rowan and Jennifer, somehow working together behind my back. Christ, if I was going to consider that, then maybe it was all of them, all three of them involved in something as a trio? And I was the one excluded, the one left out in the cold, just like at school, always left on the edge of everything, last to be picked, always on the outside looking in and—
Stop. That was pure paranoia. But I was struggling, more and more, to discern the line between what was real and what was not.
I took out my phone, zoomed the camera in on the little video screen, and snapped a picture of the freeze-framed image. Then I ejected the tape and tucked it at the back of my bedside drawer.
I had a feeling I might need it, sooner rather than later.
*
The sky was fading to a heavy blue-black, the brightest stars already pinpricks of light against the darkness. With dinner out of the way I sat down next to my daughter on a bench in the garden, the white stone still holding a ghost of warmth from the day.
‘I took care of that video, Lucy.’
She nodded. ‘Thanks.’
‘And your brother says sorry. He won’t do it again.’
‘Yeah, right.’ She sniffed. ‘Until the next time.’
‘I made him promise.’
She nodded again, but said nothing.
I turned on the bench slightly, so I was facing towards her. ‘What was it about it that really upset you, Luce? Daniel’s done it before, you know what he’s like. He does it to me, too, and your dad. But you’ve never reacted like this before.’
She shrugged, once. ‘I just don’t like being filmed.’
‘Is that all? Seems like there’s a bit more to it than that.’
She was silent, fingers twisting a long strand of her golden-blonde hair round and around, just like she had done since she was very small.
I rested my fingertips on her arm. ‘You’re not going to tell me, are you?’
She looked at me for a moment, then looked away. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘You know I won’t tell anyone, don’t you? Not your dad, not Izzy or the others, not your teacher. No one.’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Maybe not. But I’ll try to.’
She leaned forward, her face hidden by her curtain of long blonde hair. There was a long pause. When she finally spoke, she wouldn’t look at me.
‘When you film something, people think it’s just a laugh,’ she said. ‘They think it’s just something to do in that minute, on that day. They don’t think about what happens to it after that, do they?’
‘And what does happen to it after that?’
‘Well, it’s out there, isn’t it? Forever. Out there on the internet, somewhere. Even after you die, it will still be out there, floating about somewhere. Something you did when you were a teenager, whatever stupid thing you did or said – forever and ever.’
I started to get an uncomfortable feeling deep in my stomach.
‘The internet never forgets,’ I said, remembering something a detective colleague was fond of saying.
‘Yeah. That’s what I mean.’
I hesitated, not sure how to phrase the next question.
‘Is there so
mething out there, that you did? Something that you wished wasn’t out there?’
She stared out across the manicured lawn and the darkening vineyard beyond. When she looked back at me, there were tears in her eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said quietly.
‘Do you want to talk about it? A little bit?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I can’t.’
‘Who says you can’t?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘I’ll do my best, love.’
She shook her head again. ‘I’ve told you. I can’t.’
‘I’m not going to force it out of you, Lucy. But it makes me feel so useless, the idea that I can’t help you. Dad and I have always done everything for you, but now it feels like there are things that are beyond our reach. And I hate not being able to be there for you.’
She stared out towards the hills, another tear running down her cheek.
‘You can’t help. No one can.’
I put my arm around her shoulders, my heart breaking over the gap that had grown between us. My wonderful girl, my firstborn, my smart, funny, sweet child, was drifting further away from me with each passing day. And it seemed as if there was nothing I could do to bring her back.
‘This – this thing that’s out there on the internet. Is it a video?’
She closed her eyes and nodded, once. A single, tiny movement.
A watery feeling of helpless anxiety began to spread outwards from my stomach.
‘A video with you in it? The sort of thing you – you wouldn’t want me to see?’
A pause. Then another tiny nod.
I said, ‘I’m sure there are things we can do to sort it out.’
‘No.’
‘There must be something we can do to get it taken down, removed from whatever site it’s on.’
She stood up and swiped angrily at her tears.
‘I’ve told you. You can’t help! No one can!’
She walked off towards the house without another word.
I gave her a minute, then followed her in. This was something that should be shared with Sean, so we could discuss it, work out what to do – on any normal day that’s what I would have done. But normal was now a distant memory.
I could hardly look at him after today, let alone speak to him.
Daniel’s iPad lay discarded on the low coffee table in the lounge. I took it into the dining room and shut the door behind me, propping the iPad on its stand at the end of the long table. There was a rolling, sick feeling in my stomach.
My little girl is somewhere out there on the internet. Naked. Vulnerable. Naive.
I sat down and unlocked the tablet before realising that I had no real idea where to start. This video of my child – or whatever it was of – was out there somewhere other people could see it. Somewhere that other people could find it. Knowing that made me feel more helpless than ever.
It was one of those teenage things; I knew it went on, but I was pretty hazy on the details. Did they get posted on YouTube? Did they allow that kind of thing? It didn’t seem likely. Weren’t there moderators to remove nudity and sex?
I went back to Google and searched ‘sexting’. The top item was an article from Cosmopolitan magazine advising readers how to send sexy texts and messages, followed by a Wikipedia entry and another page suggesting different messages you could send to your partner. Not that helpful.
Snapchat seemed to be the main choice for kids doing this, but everything posted there apparently disappeared within ten seconds. So presumably anything she’d posted there would have been deleted. I didn’t have a Snapchat account, and even if I did it was highly unlikely that Lucy would accept a friend request from me.
I called up the browser and Googled ‘Where are sex tapes posted?’ A string of results came up, mostly about celebrities who had filmed themselves having sex and then found those films uploaded to the internet to be viewed by millions of strangers. Jennifer Lopez. Pamela Anderson. Kim Kardashian. Colin Farrell. The Wikipedia page had an alphabetised list that went on and on.
But this was getting me nowhere.
The truth was, I had very little idea about what she might have posted, or where it was, or how to get it taken down. And if she couldn’t do it, what chance did I have? We were friends on Facebook for a short time, before Lucy deleted her account, declaring that Facebook was full of adults and weirdos. I couldn’t really argue with her on that.
Maybe Sean would know about this kind of stuff, because he worked in IT. But I couldn’t ask him, not after what had happened between us today.
After an hour of fruitless searching, I turned the iPad off and headed upstairs.
By the time I climbed into bed and switched my light out, I knew I had another sleepless night ahead of me. Too many questions without answers.
I thought Sean was asleep and jumped when his deep voice reached across the darkness between us.
‘Night,’ he said quietly. ‘Love you.’
He always said it, last thing at night.
I didn’t say it back.
Six months earlier
It’s not until Daisy Marshall’s sixteenth birthday party that she talks to him properly.
She’s sitting with Fran and Emma and Megan in the garden, everyone doing vodka shots. She knows he’s been invited, she’s checked, but it’s anyone’s guess as to whether he’ll turn up. He trains a lot on evenings and weekends with the Saracens rugby academy, where they bring through all their best young players. Saracens is one of the biggest teams in the country and he mostly plays fly-half, in the No. 10 shirt.
She’s done her research.
Then, halfway through the evening, he’s there with his mates, looking hotter than ever, crisp white shirt taut across his shoulders, hair still looking wet from the shower, one of the other lads pressing a bottle of beer into his hand.
Jake beckons him over and introduces them, just like she asked him to.
She has to tell herself not to smile too much, not to be too keen, too soon. Brushing her blonde hair away from her face.
She raises a hand in a little wave and she’s like, ‘Hi, I’m—’
But he cuts her off with a smile.
‘I know who you are.’
‘Do you? You do?’
Missing cool by about a million miles.
‘Me and Jake are both in the First Fifteen. He’s told me all about you.’ His bright blue eyes on hers, long lashes blinking once, twice. ‘He was right, too.’
‘Right about what?’
‘You are the hottest girl in Year 11.’
And there’s a little starburst of joy, a deep glow in the centre of her chest.
A little sun inside her, burning hot.
TUESDAY
37
I was standing on a church steeple looking down on the village square, on a narrow walkway around the very top of the spire, trying to find Lucy. She was gone and I had to find her before something bad happened. When I walked one way around the black-pointed spire, she was there again, but she was angry with me. When I walked the other way around, to find the normal Lucy, she was gone. So I would go back to the angry Lucy, back and forth, back and forth, until I had leaned over the stone balustrade, further and further out, looking down to see if she was on the ground far below, and then I was overbalancing, slipping and falling forward –
The bedroom was still dark when I woke, the blackout curtains keeping all but a tiny sliver of light out. I lay there for a moment, Egyptian cotton sheets pulled up to my neck, trying to remember the dream. I turned over and stretched out a leg onto Sean’s side of the bed, but there was nothing there. I reached an arm out, but the sheets were cold. The other side of the bed was empty.
The digital clock on the bedside table read 8.14. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. Our en suite was empty, too, and out in the lounge the day was already dazzling bright, morning sunlight streaming through the big windows at the front o
f the villa. I shielded my eyes and closed the blinds a little to reduce the glare.
Daniel was perched on the big leather sofa in his pyjamas, eating a bowl of cereal and watching a film on the giant TV. Two Transformers were having a fist fight in the rubble of New York City. I sat down next to him, kissing the side of his head.
‘Morning, Daniel. Sleep all right, love?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Where’s your dad?’
‘He went out.’
‘Where?’
‘Shopping for bread or something. In the village.’
‘When did he go?’
Daniel shrugged.
‘Dunno. Half an hour ago? They were going to get bread and I asked if they could get Chocolate Weetos too, but thingy said they probably wouldn’t be able to find that because they have all different—’
‘They?’
‘What?’
‘He didn’t go on his own? He went with someone else?’
‘Oh, yeah. Jake and Ethan’s mum.’ He slurped milk off his spoon and pulled a face. ‘I don’t really like French milk, Mummy, can we get normal milk?’
‘That is normal for France, love. It just tastes a bit different because it’s ultra-pasteurised to kill any bugs.’ I stood up and peered into the empty kitchen. ‘So just the two of them went? Just your dad and Jennifer?’
‘Yeah. I wanted to go too but they said they were only going for a few bits and anyway, I still had my PJs on.’ He carried on munching his cereal. ‘What are we doing today?’
‘Don’t know yet,’ I said absently. ‘Something nice.’
Izzy appeared at the foot of the stairs, yawning hugely in her pyjamas. She raised a hand in silent greeting and padded into the kitchen.
I nodded back and decided to call Sean’s mobile, on the pretext that they should also get some pastries and cakes for lunch. As it rang, I walked around the villa, out onto the balcony, popping my head into the dining room. No one else seemed to be up and about yet.
Sean’s phone went to voicemail. I hung up and tried again, leaving a brief message the second time.
