by Marian Keyes
I whip round to her. ‘Neeve, no! You can’t do this to Sofie!’
‘There’s nothing to identify Sofie,’ Real Neeve says, at the same time as Sofie says, ‘Amy, I want Neeve to tell my story.’
iPad Neeve says, ‘My friend missed a pill, and even though she took the morning after, she got pregnant. She’s young, has no money, and emotionally wasn’t ready to be a mother. I went to the UK with her.’
The film is all movement, you don’t see any faces, but you do see Dublin airport, the departures board, the inside of the plane, the tube – Neeve must have had her phone on the entire time. But when she shows Druzie’s spare room I lose the head. ‘Does Druzie know her flat is in your –’
‘She’s cool with it.’
Making clear that ‘the pregnant friend’ is being played by an actor, a silhouetted woman describes everything that happened to Sofie, as if it had happened to her: the terror; the shame; the physical discomfort; the appalling financial cost.
‘Why does our country do this to our women and girls?’ iPad Neeve asks, as we see Sofie (pixellated out) being put on the luggage trolley, too weak to walk.
‘Our abortion rate is the same as everywhere else in the developed world. Can we please stop pretending it doesn’t happen?’
In every vlog Neeve does, she links to the items she’s showcased so people can buy them. This week, she has links to Aer Lingus, London black cabs, London tourism, the Marie Stopes site, etc, and the combined sums come to over two thousand euro.
‘This happened six months ago,’ iPad Neeve says. ‘My friend is getting on with her life. She does not regret her decision.’
I don’t know what to say. I’m worried about Neeve, about Sofie, even – to my shame – about Mum: with her connections to Neeve’s site she might be seen as an endorser of abortion.
‘I can’t not do this,’ Neeve says. ‘I have strongly held views, I have a platform …’
‘Neeve, not everyone will agree with you.’
‘You’re right. I’ll lose subscribers. I might gain new ones. But that’s not why I’m doing this.’
‘What about your advertisers?’ What if she loses her income due to this?
‘I’ve talked with them. They’re good with it.’
‘What does your dad say?’
‘He’s chill.’
‘What about Granny?’
‘Granny knows. All of it. About Sofie. Granny is on our side.’
‘You’d get a lot of hate. The trolls. All this goodwill you’ve built up …’
‘I’m shifting my position, reaching out to those who think the way I do. I’m finding my tribe. It goes live on Monday afternoon.’
120
Monday, 26 June
‘It’s up,’ Tim announces.
Shite. Alastair, Thamy and I gather round his screen to watch Neeve’s abortion vlog. All day Monday I’ve been a wreck. In silence, we watch the four minutes forty seconds of it.
‘Brave.’ Tim sounds like he thinks she’s certifiable.
‘You should be proud of her,’ Alastair says to me. ‘She’s a hero.’
But not everyone will agree.
There’s no way I’ll get any more work done this afternoon. I monitor online news-sites, Twitter, those horrible boards, and a trickle of comments begins. I follow the feed on YouTube and mercifully every single post is supportive. I keep watching. More than two hours has passed and maybe this is all going to be okay. And then …
‘Oh, God, it’s … Some man says he’s going to stab her.’
Alastair hurries to my side and stares at the screen. ‘He thinks Neeve’s “the friend”.’
‘What should I do?’ I ask him.
‘Might be just a one-off.’
But a few minutes later another person has a go, this time calling Neeve a baby-murderer who will burn in Hell.
‘Par for the course,’ Alastair mutters.
A new message pops up from a man saying he knows where Neeve lives and that he plans to rape her with a broken bottle. I start to shake. ‘These people,’ I say. ‘These threats. Can they be stopped?’
‘Maybe.’ Alastair does some clicking and it’s as I suspected. ‘Sock puppet accounts. Untraceable. The police might be able to do something more sophisticated with their technology.’
I switch back to Twitter: ‘Neeve Aldin’ is trending in Ireland.
Then, to my absolute horror, I see that an anonymous head has tweeted Neeve’s home address in Riverside Quarter. It’s up there for all the world to see and before my very eyes it’s being retweeted.
‘Call her,’ Alastair hisses.
I’m already on it. ‘Neeve.’ My voice is shaking. ‘Are you at home? You need to get out of there.’
‘It’s cool, Mum.’
‘No, your address has just been put on Twitter.’
‘Oh. Shit … How?’
Easily – Neeve has done vlogs from her fancy pad. She’s said publicly she’s living in her dad’s apartment. Ireland is a small place.
‘There’s a concierge here,’ she says. ‘Fingerpad entry. Electronic surveillance. I’m safe.’
‘Promise me you’ll stay inside.’
‘This will all calm down in a couple of hours,’ she says.
‘Until it does, stay inside. Don’t answer the door to anyone. Maybe you should call the guards.’
She laughs. ‘Mu-um, please!’
I hang up and ask Alastair, ‘Am I overreacting? These are just strange, lonely men wanking at their keyboards?’
‘Ah. Probably.’
But all you need is one evil person determined to remake the world according to his liking.
Paralysed, I watch the thread of comments. I’m afraid to stop monitoring it in case something even worse happens. There’s a lot of love for Neeve, but even the people on her side assume she is ‘the friend’, and the stream of positivity is more than matched by the hate.
‘Oh, God,’ I say. ‘Now Richie’s getting some of the flak.’
Many of the keyboard warriors reference the recent article in the Sunday Times in which Neeve and Richie boasted about how close they are.
‘Did Richie Aldin fund this for his daughter? Soz! For his daughter’s “friend”, I mean.’
And ‘Richie Aldin aborted his own grandchild.’
At home, Sofie and Kiara are pretending to be calm but they hadn’t expected Neeve would get so much hate.
‘It was – is the right thing to do,’ Kiara insists.
There’s the sound of a key in the front door, then Hugh steps into the hall.
Oh, right, it’s Monday night, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend night. It had slipped my mind.
‘Y’okay?’ Hugh asks me.
‘You know about it?’
He nods. ‘It’ll be okay,’ he says. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘I wish she was here.’
‘She’s probably safer where she is.’
‘Hugh, do you mind if we cancel tonight?’
‘Ah, no,’ Sofie says. ‘We want him to stay.’
‘Please,’ Kiara says. ‘Let him stay.’
‘Okay. But I’m not watching it.’ I need to sit at the kitchen table and monitor social media, to see if the situation escalates.
But when the show starts, Hugh comes to the kitchen door and says, ‘Why don’t you try and watch it? You need a break from the worry.’ He moves closer and everything about him is reassuring.
‘Will she be okay?’ I ask him.
‘She’ll be okay.’
We sit beside each other on the couch, he holds my hand and I let him.
After Hugh leaves, I decide I can’t go to London in the morning. This might all amount to nothing, but then again it might not, and I want to be here for Neeve.
I sit up in bed and send a dozen emails cancelling my meetings, then try to sleep.
121
Tuesday, 27 June
I wake at a godawful early hour and immediately google Neeve. The important thing is how th
e mainstream media are reporting this.
There’s a robustly supportive article in the Irish Times, and another nice one in the Examiner. But the Independent has a well-known columnist who really lays into Neeve, calling her ‘stunt’ shrill, immature, attention-seeking and all-round pathetic. There’s an even more damning piece in the Mail. No surprises there.
One journalist has a go at Richie. He was barely in Neeve’s life back in December when the trip took place but the fact that they’ve been as thick as thieves for the last few months is impacting badly on him. They were at a film premiere together last week, and there’s even a photo from the ‘poor blind children’s ball’. Facts connecting them are trotted out – that Neeve lives in his apartment, that Richie had done a couple of guest vlogs for her, even how alike they look.
So long as Neeve is okay, that’s all that matters. I want to ring her but it’s too early, so I settle for a text and get no reply. Immediately I’m thinking she’s been butchered and is lying in her gaudy apartment in a pool of blood.
But what can I do, except behave as normal?
I’m not long in the office when she rings me. ‘Dad’s kicked me out.’
‘What?’
‘He’s kicked me out of the flat and taken back the car.’
‘But didn’t you say he was cool with all of this?’
‘He’s getting hated on and he wasn’t expecting it. He’s pissed, Mum. Can I come home?’
‘Of course! I’ll pick you up.’
‘Mu-um.’ For a moment she sounds as if she’s smiling. ‘I’ll get a taxi.’
‘But – Look, be careful, will you? Are there people, you know, protesters, outside?’
‘Ah, Mum.’ Now she really is smiling. ‘Yeah, there’s a big dirty mob out there, waving placards.’
‘Make sure you’re not followed. I’ll meet you at home, and get you settled.’ I hang up and say to Tim and Alastair, ‘Sorry, lads, I have to go.’
When I arrive home, exactly one hour after I’d left for work, Neeve has let herself in. She looks pale and stunned.
There’s only one canvas bag in the hall so I conclude that Richie hasn’t actually evicted her, he’s just throwing a tantrum.
‘No, Mum.’ She reads my mind. ‘He wanted me out immediately. He’s getting all my stuff boxed up and sent on in a van.’
Christ. Just when I’d thought he couldn’t get any more heinous. This is going to be the heartbreak of Neeve’s life.
‘Dad said it was all good with him, me taking a stand. I don’t understand.’ She’s getting tearful.
But I understand. He’s an unprincipled prick. He’d thought being pro-choice would play well, but all the negative publicity has scared him. Who knows how this will unfold in the medium term, if Neeve will be declared a winner or loser? Richie doesn’t have the guts to hold his nerve, even for his daughter.
As always, though, my mouth stays shut.
The sound of my phone ringing makes us both jump. It’s Hugh.
‘Amy?’ He sounds frantic. ‘Where are you?’
‘At home. What’s up?’
‘Is Neeve with you?’
‘Yes, wh–’
‘Your address is up on one of those boards. People know Neeve is with you, or they’re guessing. Either way, it’s –’
With shaking hands, I go online. Oh, fuck, this can’t be real, this can’t be happening – Hugh is right. There’s our address.
It was hard enough knowing threats of rape and painful death were aimed at Neeve while she was secured inside a state-of-the-art apartment. But here? In this small suburban house?
At lightning speed a scenario plays out in my head – a brick through the window, the angry men inside the living room in twenty seconds, and up the stairs in another ten. Us all in our beds with nothing to protect ourselves and no one to help us. Which one of you is Neeve? If the house alarm goes off, it takes about fifteen minutes for the monitors to ring to see if everything is okay. By then we’d all be butchered.
If this was happening to someone else, I’d think, Yes, it’s bound to be unpleasant, but no actual harm will come to anyone, these keyboard cowards are just throwing shapes to scare people.
But now that it’s actually in play, I’m terrified. I look out of the kitchen window, half expecting to see men bumbling along the windowsill or for a gloved hand to try the handle on the back door.
‘I’m on my way over now,’ Hugh says. ‘But ring the police.’
I phone the local station, feeling foolish, petrified and embarrassed all at once. ‘My daughter’s received some death threats.’
Within twenty minutes, a pair of guards have arrived, a woman and a man, who insist the threats have to be taken seriously. The man goes off to see how vulnerable we are to home invasion and the woman starts taking down all the details. Then she spots something in the hall. Fearfully she jumps to her feet and shouts, ‘What is your business here?’
It’s Hugh. Oh, thank God, it’s only Hugh, who must have let himself in with his key.
‘It’s okay, Officer – Sergeant.’ I have no idea of police hierarchy. ‘This is my husband, ex … Neeve’s step-dad.’
‘He lives here?’
‘Not any more but it’s fine, we know him.’
The male guard is back and he says to Neeve, ‘You can’t stay here. Is there a friend you can go to for a few days? Till things calm down?’
‘Um, yeah, I’ll just make a call.’ Neeve hits a button and launches into a high-pitched exchange, lots of ‘Totally!’ and ‘I know, right!’ as if getting death threats was the most exciting thing ever. But when she makes her request for accommodation, the entire tenor changes. All energy drains from her. ‘Right. I get it. Totally. Yeah. Later.’
She rings someone else and has a near-identical conversation. When she hangs up, Hugh asks, ‘What’s going on?’
‘They’re too scared to let me stay with them.’
‘What about a hotel?’ I suggest.
But it wouldn’t be the guards’ preferred option: too many opportunities to be spotted.
Tentatively Hugh says, ‘What about my place? There’s very little to connect Neeve and me. I haven’t lived here for nine months. Neeve and I have different surnames.’
The guards are interested, and after they’ve established that Hugh lives alone, without any pesky flatmates to dob Neeve in, they seem happy to let her go there.
‘How long for?’ Neeve is tearful.
‘Impossible to say. Would you also stay there, Mr Durrant?’
Hugh looks at Neeve. ‘I don’t have to. I can stay at Nugent’s.’
‘Is there room for both of us at your place?’ Neeve asks. ‘I’d feel safer if you stayed.’
The guards break the news that they have to take Neeve’s laptop and for the first time I think she really is going to faint.
‘It’s inadvisable for you and the other occupants of this house to remain here either,’ the lady guard says. ‘For a few days anyway.’
‘I’ll just call my mum.’
Mercifully Mum is home and not out gin-and-tonicking. I launch into an explanation and she gets it immediately.
‘So can Sofie, Kiara and I stay for a few days?’
‘What about Neeve?’
‘She’ll stay with Hugh.’
‘With Hugh? And him not even her real daddy?’ Mum’s laugh is grim. ‘Isn’t she lucky he’s never held that against her?’
Mum and Pop are sitting in their overgrown garden, drinking tea.
‘EXCELLENT TIMING,’ Pop greets me with. ‘THIS WOMAN HAS JUST AGREED TO MARRY ME!’
‘Humour him,’ Mum says.
‘Congratulations, Pop.’
‘SHE’S THE WOMAN OF MY DREAMS. I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER.’
‘That’s lovely news.’ In a way I mean it.
Soon Pop needs to return to his serial killers. Mum and I remain outside.
‘Poor Mum.’ My sympathy is profound. ‘Do you still see your gin-and-tonic frie
nds?’ It’s a genuine question, asked without judgement.
A long pause follows in which she stares at her lap. Eventually she looks up. ‘It’s hard, Amy, sharing a house with a headcase.’
‘I know.’
‘You don’t. You have no idea. But my gin-and-tonic friends, that was nothing. Just some light relief.’ She grasps my wrist and forces me to look at her. ‘I’d never do anything to hurt your father. For better, for worse, it’s what I signed up for when I married him.’
‘You could never have anticipated this, though?’
‘But that’s the point, Amy. It’s easy to love someone when they’re on their best behaviour – you can do that in your sleep. The real test is when they’re – to use Neeve’s expression – a pain in the hole. That’s what love actually means.’
‘Does that not just make you a walkover?’
‘There’s a difference,’ she’s uncharacteristically grim, ‘between being a doormat and forgiving someone for being human.’
‘Grand. Well.’ I’m keen to escape from her and her odd mood. ‘I’d better find the sheets and stuff, get myself and the girls organized.’
‘Do that.’ She calls after me. ‘Make your bed, Amy. Make your bed.’
122
Friday, 30 June
The social media firestorm continued to blaze with promises of a variety of slow, lingering deaths for Neeve; the mainstream papers and chat shows call her silly, shrill and strident.
But by Thursday morning I could almost feel the interest ebbing, like the tide going out. The posts on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube dried to a trickle and by Thursday afternoon it was over.
Neeve was allowed to come home, and now that it’s safe, I’m sheepishly wondering if we all overreacted.
On Friday morning Sofie and Kiara leave for Switzerland. Hugh and I meet at the airport to see them off. After countless hugs and checks, some friendly advice and more hugs, it’s finally time to let them go. Kiara is the first to disappear around a screen to security. But just before Sofie also vanishes from sight, she turns and looks directly at me and Hugh. Very deliberately she pats her heart, and mouths, ‘Thank you.’ She’s smiling, but even from a distance it’s clear that she has tears in her eyes.
