Chapter 4
Seven hours later, Essie was dragged out of sleep by the sound of her mobile ringing on the bedside table. Fumbling for it with her eyes still closed, she pressed Answer and murmured, ‘Yes?’
‘Oh my God, Ess! What did you do? What happened after I left you last night?’
Just reaching across for her phone and holding it to her ear had exacerbated the ache in her shoulder from all the scrubbing. Essie rolled onto her back. ‘Don’t remind me. What a complete nightmare! Ursula brought a live crow in through the cat flap and raced around the cottage with it in her mouth, then she let it go and it was flapping its wings and pooing everywhere and there were spatters of blood on the carpet . . . It’s the most hideous thing that’s happened to me in years—’
‘Whoa, whoa,’ Scarlett interrupted. ‘I’m not talking about Ursula. This is about the email.’
‘What email?’
‘The one you sent. The round-robin thing! Ess, did you open another bottle of wine after I left?’
‘What?’ Essie frowned. Had she? No, there’d been no more wine, just plenty of Cif and scrubbing sponges and hot soapy water and stain remover. ‘I didn’t send any email. One hundred per cent definitely didn’t do it.’
‘Well someone did! OK, did you write a round robin?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t send it to you.’
‘You’re right, you didn’t send it to me.’ Scarlett sighed. ‘OK, brace yourself. You sent it to everyone in your address book.’
‘No . . . I haven’t sent anything to anyone.’ Essie’s stomach began to clench with fear, cottoning on faster than her just-woken brain. ‘I wrote it, but that’s all. What do you mean, it’s gone to everyone in my address book? It can’t have done . . . that’s impossible. Are you joking?’ As she said it, she threw back the duvet and jumped out of bed.
‘I wish I was. This isn’t a joke. Ess, I don’t understand, it’s right here on my phone, I’m looking at it now. It’s been sent out to over two hundred email addresses . . .’
Oh fuck. Fuck. Now Essie had never been more awake in her life. Swallowing a wave of nausea, she wrenched open her bedroom door and heard the telltale burble of the TV playing downstairs.
So much for having made up the bed in the spare room. After a good night out, Jay had always preferred to collapse on the sofa and fall asleep with the TV on. And yes, there he was, out for the count and with his shoes kicked off, but otherwise fully clothed.
And there was her laptop, sitting on the marble coffee table. Where had she left it before going to bed? On the sofa with the lid up. Now the lid was closed. Essie’s knees were trembling as she descended the stairs, opened the computer and saw what she already knew she’d see.
But viewing the evidence in black and white brought her to a whole new level of panic and despair, as the enormity of what it signified began to sink in. There was no other conceivable way it could have happened, no way at all.
‘Oh my God, you stupid . . .’ It was no good; words simply failed her. Nothing was bad enough. Essie shook her brother’s shoulder, which elicited no response, then gave him an almighty shove so that he rolled off the sofa and landed on the floor with a thud.
‘Ow,’ Jay complained, jolted awake and gazing up at her in wounded disbelief. He blinked blearily. ‘What was that for?’
‘The email you sent. It was you, wasn’t it? I can’t believe you did it.’ She aimed a barefoot kick at his leg and was so angry she managed to miss it completely. ‘I let you sleep here and that’s how you repay me? How could you even think it would be a good idea?’
‘What . . .?’ He screwed his face up in apparent confusion.
‘Don’t even try to wriggle out of this. I left my laptop open, you saw what I’d written and you’d had enough to drink that you thought it’d be hilarious to send it out to everyone I know. Jay, I actually want to kill you. Because guess what? It isn’t funny. What you’ve done is going to cause me a whole world of trouble. This could wreck everything, don’t you get it? Everything. You sent it to Paul, you sent it to his mother . . . I can’t even bear to think about what’s going to happen when they see it, and it’s all your fault.’
‘OK, look . . . I didn’t do anything. I know what’s happened,’ Jay said suddenly. ‘It was the cat. She walked across your keyboard. I bet that’s what it was. You know what cats are like.’
Essie stared at him. ‘Are you seriously saying that’s how the email got sent out?’
‘Yes!’
Her voice rose. ‘And you’re actually expecting me to believe it?’
‘That’s what cats do! They walk over things!’ Still on the floor, Jay made cat’s paws out of his hands and mimed them padding along.
‘So you reckon Ursula pressed All and then she pressed Send. Of course she did. Oh God, Paul’s going to dump me, his mother’s going to sack me, my life is going to be over and I’m never, ever going to forgive you for this . . . Aaargh!’ Essie let out an even louder shriek of alarm as behind her, someone cleared their throat. She spun round wildly. ‘What’s going on? Who the hell are you?’
‘I’m Lucas. I’m sorry. I did it. It was me.’
‘You what?’ Essie stared at the stranger in the living room, then back at her brother on the floor. ‘Who is he? What’s he doing here?’ It was like the worst kind of dream, except she wasn’t dreaming. That would be far too easy.
Jay shrugged. ‘His name’s Lucas. I met him at the party last night. He’d lost his jacket with his wallet and keys in it and couldn’t get home. And it was, like, four in the morning, so I said he could stay here. I knew you wouldn’t mind.’
‘You’re telling me a complete stranger spent the night in our spare room, even though he could have been anyone. And you didn’t even think to ask me if it was OK?’
‘Oh come on,’ Jay protested. ‘At four o’clock in the morning? You told me not to wake you up! Anyway, if I had asked you earlier, you know you’d have said yes.’
‘I offered to sleep on the sofa,’ said Lucas, ‘but your brother insisted I took the bed.’
‘But first you sent my letter to everyone?’ Essie could scarcely bear to look at him; she was shaking. ‘Why? Why would you do that?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It was such a bad idea.’ He shook his head helplessly. ‘We’d been to a great party, we’d had some drinks . . . well, quite a few drinks . . . then we came back here in a taxi. Jay picked up your laptop to move it somewhere safe, and that was when all the stuff you’d been writing appeared on the screen. So we read it, and we thought it was hilarious, then Jay went off to the bathroom and I just . . . you know, kind of . . . sent it.’
‘Because?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess we’d thought it was funny, so why not give more people a laugh? It was one of those stupid, spur-of-the-moment decisions. The next thing I knew, I was pressing Send to All, then I closed the laptop and headed up to bed. It wasn’t your brother’s fault. He didn’t know I’d done anything. It was all me.’
Through gritted teeth, Essie said, ‘Great.’
‘Again, sorry. I’m an idiot.’
‘I wrote some awful things about my boyfriend’s mother. It was a private joke between my best friend and me. No one else was ever going to see it, let alone the people I’d written about. But now you’ve sent it to them.’ There was a dull ache in Essie’s chest. She knew she was in shock; her brain was doing its best to protect her by shutting out the worst of the panicky thoughts that were ricocheting around it.
‘Is there any way we can delete the email? There must be,’ said Jay.
‘There isn’t.’ Essie shook her head. ‘Not once it’s been sent.’
‘Well there should be.’ Jay frowned. ‘Someone needs to invent an app for that. They’d make themselves a fortune.’
Lucas looked at him for a long moment, his jaw taut. Then he turned back to Essie. ‘OK, I’ve got it. You tell them it was nothing to do with you. I’ll say I wrote the whole thing. They can’t blame you for that, can they? Not if I go and see them and confess.’
Essie considered this option, willing it to be possible but already aware that it wasn’t. The details she’d included in the letter had clearly come from her. No one else would have been able to invent them.
‘It’s no good, it wouldn’t work. They’d know it was me.’ Tears of frustration sprang into her eyes as she realised there was no way out. No amount of grovelling would ever make up for this.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lucas repeated.
‘You keep saying it, but it doesn’t help. You have no idea what you’ve done. You’ve ruined my life, quite literally ruined it.’ The words caught in Essie’s throat as she took a shuddery breath. ‘I don’t even know you, but I despise you.’ She hated crying, but it was happening anyway; the tears were sliding down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. ‘And I never, ever want to see you again. Go, please. Just leave.’ She looked at him and pointed to the front door. ‘You’ve done enough.’
Breaking the ensuing deathly silence, Jay said, ‘What about me? Do you want me to stay?’
Essie shook her head. ‘No point. There’s nothing you can do.’
‘OK.’ He glanced at Lucas. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’ll call a cab.’
Once the two of them had left, Essie sat down and wrote out a long explanatory email to send to everyone who’d received a copy of the round robin. It hadn’t been genuine; it had been a joke, of course it had. Someone had played a trick on her, writing and sending it on her behalf, and it went without saying that none of it was true.
Which would take care of most of the recipients, those who didn’t actually know her that well. They would read the round robin, have a good laugh about it, hopefully sympathise with her over the embarrassment that had been caused, then promptly forget it.
Unlike those closer to home. Who definitely wouldn’t.
But it had to be done. Trembling and feeling sicker than ever, Essie brought the round robin up on the screen and forced herself to reread the words she’d written.
Oh God . . .