‘Really?’ Nathan closed his eyes and offered a long, relieved breath. ‘Can I see the video? Yan says Freedom for All won’t be using it.’
Corrine hesitated as her conscience reared its head. She could lie and say she had deleted it. But they deserved her honesty, no matter how bad a picture the truth might paint of her. Only when she’d finished filling them in did she lift her eyes from the floor and dare to look to Yan and Nathan for their reaction. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added. ‘I was desperate and it was selfish and now I’ve ruined any leverage we had over her.’
‘I’d have done the same,’ Yan admitted. ‘But I can’t say everyone else at the FFA will agree with us.’
‘What if I go on the record and tell the media what she did to me?’ asked Nathan.
‘As much as I would like to believe the truth will out, we live in morally bankrupt times. It’s her word over yours. And who are people going to believe? A respected MP or a teenager? Plus you’d be contradicting FFA as it claimed we had no involvement in it. No one is going to come out of this smelling of roses.’
‘So there’s nothing to stop her from doing this again to others?’
Corrine shook her head slowly. ‘No. There’s not.’
A hush fell across the warehouse until a voice came from the doorway.
‘There might be another way for you to expose her,’ it began. All three turned quickly to face their uninvited guest. ‘And, if it works, it’ll destroy her.’
86
Roxi
‘Do you miss posting on social media?’ asked Owen suddenly. He picked at a plate of blackberries and blueberries as Roxi placed the tablet she was surfing face up on the sofa. Never hold a conversation with the world in your hands, their Relationship Responder Adrian had advised them. As much as she wanted to forget about the whole experience, some of his advice stuck to her like burned pasta at the bottom of a pan.
‘No, I don’t really miss it,’ she lied. ‘It was fun while it lasted.’
‘Not even a little bit?’
‘That part of my life is over.’
‘But it meant so much to you.’
‘Not as much as my family does.’
Owen’s gratified expression told her it had been the right thing to say and he returned to watching his football match on the television.
Roxi didn’t mention that while she had placed blocks on her phone and tablet preventing her from accessing her former accounts, she had only suspended them and not closed them completely. She was not yet ready to take that final step. Her former career was now a ghost roaming the halls of the internet, waiting for her to return or to act as an exorcist and hit the delete button.
‘I still keep getting invitations to be a talking head,’ she added. ‘I turned down another request for a podcast interview this morning.’
‘Really?’ said Owen, surprised. ‘I assumed interest in you would’ve faded by now.’
‘I guess I made more of a lasting impression than I thought.’
‘I’m sure they’ll forget about you soon enough.’
He hadn’t said it unkindly, but it still smarted.
‘I’m going to put those away,’ she said, pointing to a basket of freshly laundered clothing in the corner of the room. All this time to fill meant a t-shirt barely graced the bottom of the wash bin before it ended up in a spin cycle. The swap from Influencer to housewife made her weep if she thought too much about it.
What she actually wanted was a few moments of respite from her husband, even if it was while they were still under the same roof. Since Adrian had left and they were Unlevelled, Owen had stuck to her like a limpet on the hull of theTitanic. His reasoning was that to remain close emotionally, they had to remain close physically. He had even condensed his working week from five to four days so that he could spend long weekends with his family. If it were up to Roxi, she’d have asked his employers to increase them to include Saturdays and Sundays. Upstairs, she placed a balled-up pair of freshly laundered trainer socks into her mouth, covered her face with a towel and screamed until her throat was hoarse.
Roxi had naively assumed that, with no online distractions, she could become the wife and mother everyone in that house wanted her to be. But that role and her family’s love didn’t fulfil her. To her shame, it didn’t even come close. She yearned for her old life so much that sometimes it made her nauseous. Some nights she found herself padding silently down the staircase and into the garage to sit inside Owen’s car. She had perfected sobbing so silently that her tears couldn’t be picked up by her recordable tech.
She frequently asked herself why she couldn’t be like other women. Why couldn’t she live in the moment instead of always wanting more? Millions of single people would kill for a husband and children like hers. She had even killed at the thought of losing them. Now, this perpetual suppression and claustrophobia was suffocating her. And she couldn’t find a way past it.
When Darcy had turned thirteen a fortnight earlier, she’d asked for her mum’s help in creating new social media platforms. It was like inviting a recently sober alcoholic on a pub crawl. It was intoxicating helping her with content creation, editing, lighting, promotion and watching her subscriber numbers steadily rise. Mother and daughter finally had something to bond over. The notification sounds returned her to a time when she had been at her happiest. Antoinette Cooper had been right when she’d suggested to Owen that Roxi’s need for social media was an addiction. But going cold turkey hadn’t ended the cravings. She briefly considered that it might be just about enough to live vicariously through Darcy. However, she knew she’d be fooling herself.
The front door sensors beeped, alerting her to company, and she suddenly became self-conscious of the footwear in her mouth.
