Chapter 30
I’m not expecting Alice to be there when I let myself in the following day for Oscar’s dog walk and bowel evacuation – as it happens, I’m trying to figure out walking routes on which I am entirely positive I will not meet Naomi – but sure enough, there Alice is.
‘I didn’t know you’d be here,’ I tell her, standing uncertainly in the doorway.
‘I know. I’m meant to be somewhere else, but I’m just … having a hard time leaving the house right now.’ Her eyes are red-rimmed, and she is certainly shaken.
‘I mean, I can’t even look at this thing any more.’ She half laughs, gesturing to her phone. It buzzes regularly in her hand, and she flinches. ‘I’ve turned off all notifications, but they still seem to get to me somehow.’
I feel a momentary slice of guilt, wondering if Violet and the others have become more merciless and unrelenting in their contact. It would explain all of this.
‘I know I’m not supposed to even take on board what they say, but it’s gotten pretty bad. Ted thinks someone is hacking into his cell phone. He’s kinda freaked.’
I bury the thoughts of me trying to figure out his email password.
‘We’re probably gonna take some time out of all of this,’ Alice tells me. ‘He knows a guy who owns a place in Miami, so we might go hang out there for a while. Just until … I don’t know what.’
‘Well, just know that I’ll be here and able to help with Oscar,’ I say. I’m trying to keep anything too cloying out of my voice. Maybe she’ll ask me to housesit.
‘We’ll probably take him along.’ Alice sighs softly. ‘But thank you.’
‘Well, why don’t you sit tight here and I’ll get Oscar doing his cardio for the day?’
‘You’re sweet,’ Alice says, but still distracted. Oscar must sense the vibe too; he leaves with me without putting up much protest.
By the time I arrive back half an hour later, I see Ted’s form through the window. This feels almost like too big a moment to fully process now that I’ve finally arrived at it, but after a deep breath, I let myself in anyhow.
Pretending not to notice Ted, I unleash Oscar, who basically ignores him and wanders away, looking for his rightful owner. Ted doesn’t give me too much attention either.
He’s pacing in little circles, agitated. He’s being brilliantly protective. I think back to what Elliott said. Maybe he got Ted all wrong.
‘So it’s intense around here, huh?’ I say. Not looking at me, he exhales deeply, conspiratorially, not wanting to get too much into it.
It doesn’t have to be like this, I want to tell him. You and I can escape all this and start over and do things nice and low-key. Do I still want that, though? I think I do.
‘It’s just …’ he starts, then falters. ‘People are just so fucking weird, you know?’
‘I do know,’ I say emphatically. ‘Totally.’
‘I’ve just had enough of all of this,’ he says, looking me right in the eye. He sounds about a hundred years old as he says it. ‘I just can’t do it any more.’
Him confiding in me feels incredible. I bask in the warmth of the moment, inwardly begging the universe for more like it.
Being in Ted’s presence makes Alice’s small living room feel like a bakehouse. ‘Wow, it’s warm for mid-September,’ I tell the room.
I feel his eyes on me as I pull my jumper over my head – try to make it a bit sexy – to reveal a tighter T-shirt underneath, praying that I don’t yet have sweat stains.
‘Oh my God,’ I hear him say in a low voice from within the folds of my jumper.
‘It’s you.’ And for a split second, I believe I’m hearing the words I’ve wanted to hear for so long.
Because it is me. I have truly never felt so on the grid as I do in this moment.
Suddenly, all of it – my mum, Johnny, the Harry Potter lampshade, Stevie – is now worth it.
Everything that has brought me here to him feels as though it’s been merely a prelude.
But when my head emerges from the jumper, I notice that Ted’s mouth is caught in a hateful, incredulous snarl. I know that kind of snarl from years ago, and it makes me freeze.
Ted walks towards me and touches me on the hip. Is he going to kiss me, here in Alice’s house?
‘These look familiar,’ he says, gesturing at the elephant tattoo. He appears to be heavy in processing mode.
‘I fucking know this tattoo,’ he eventually says, disgusted. His eyes are hateful slits. ‘From Facebook.’
My mouth can only flap on its hinges.
‘What the fuck are you doing here? In this house?’ The whites of his eyes are genuinely petrifying. Full of hate.
I’ve imagined him looking into my eyes a thousand times, our eyes swimming in each other’s souls like deep, cool lagoon pools. But for a fleeting second, I see myself as Ted sees me.
He looks at me as though I’m a fan. A bothersome, pathetic fly to be swatted away from his breakfast. As if I’m Violet, whom he had to block on Facebook. The moment is like a bucket of cold water, poured from a great, cruel height.
‘Ted, what is wrong with you?’ Alice materializes from the hallway. ‘It’s Esther. Naomi gave her the address.’
‘Naomi …?’ He is still pulling the puzzle pieces together, searching for logic, and as he does so, it feels as though I’m falling to the floor.
‘It’s Esther. Naomi’s housemate.’
His eyes dart here and there.
‘The housemate she’s had for the last year? Ted’ – Alice laughs nervously – ‘she was only here trying to help.’
‘Alice,’ he booms back, unable to contain his own laughter. ‘She’s a fucking Tedette. One of the goddam Tedettes on that Facebook page.’
He turns to face me fully, and the sense of menace is like a hot breath all over me. ‘You didn’t know I was even in there, did you?’
I’m too dazed to even fully register that Alice and Ted know who the Tedettes are, much less that he himself saw the Facebook group.
How did he get himself in there? Did he become a member?
Was it a burner account? How long was he even there?
Alice’s face creases into confusion, then a torturous sort of anguish.
‘No, you’re wrong,’ she says uncertainly. ‘Esther lives with Naomi. She’s not one of them.’
Ted wordlessly pulls out his phone, tapping it with fury, and I can just about make out the form of my Facebook profile as he thrusts the phone at her.
A few taps, and he brings up the Tedettes’ page.
She stares at the phone, blinking. Her eyes rise to meet mine, and I have the exact same stomach-churning feeling you get when you’ve put your handbag, with your whole life in it, down on the floor in a busy pub, only to realize when you go to retrieve it that it’s been stolen and there’s a space there instead.
It’s been taken. Except, somehow, you took it yourself.
‘Do you know what they write about me?’ Alice’s voice wobbles. ‘You and I … we’ve talked about that.’
‘Just call the fucking cops,’ Ted bellows.
Hearing the ‘c’ word is like a smack in the face after five tequilas.
A fire alarm in the dead of night. I have been walked into a whole new reality in five seconds flat, and I’m gasping for air.
I feel everything from the last few months – the new life, the power couple, the affection – retreat away from me, and my hands can’t grab at it fast enough.
‘Now, you know that’s not a good idea,’ Alice says, slowly and carefully.
‘Fuck that,’ Ted spits back, pulling out his phone. ‘The things those people have said about you. Written about you.’
‘I know.’ Alice looks at me so sadly. It’s more than I can bear to hear from her.
He taps in 911. Alice is beside him, quick as a flash.
‘What are you going to say to them? You can’t arrest someone for befriending a sibling,’ Alice says. ‘For being a fan.’
Ted ignores her. ‘Hello … police department please. I’d like to report a criminal harassment.’
The words are mortifying to hear.
‘I promise you both,’ I enunciate to Alice as carefully as I can, though it still comes out garbled, while Ted waits on the phone, ‘if you let me walk out of here now, you will never hear a thing from me again. None of you. You have my word on that.’
Alice looks at me as though she’s in the presence of a rabid animal. Ted lobs one last look of triple-distilled disgust at me before turning away. Alice turns her back to me too, facing him as he gives the 911 operator the address.
With their backs turned, I make a run for the door. I’m sick with relief when it opens easily and I feel fresh air on my face, leaving Ted chattering down the phone behind me.