‘I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened,’ Mauve says.
She can’t help me anyway. I literally hire people for things like this.
I stare from the window. The town so unlike the one I grew up in goes past in slow flashes of green and brown. A few people stand still on the side of the street, their faces gaping when they spot me in the back of the car. I bow my head, avoiding their eye contact, knowing I’ll become a story they tell their wives, mums, children, neighbours, later this evening.I saw that Sienna Martin earlier. She always looks so sad, doesn’t she? I heard her grandad’s dead now. Awful that so many people have died. Yes, Bert. It’s very sad. Almost as sad as the fact you lost your hair to male-pattern baldness before you turned twenty-five.
If I were still at home, still a normal person in the Martin family who doesn’t own an eleven-bedroom mansion overlooking Hampstead Heath, we would be driving past The Harvester sometime around now. We’d eaten so many of our birthday meals there growing up. It was the only place at which Nana would eat. Fish and chips or gammon was all she’d order –and later, when she became really sick, only desserts. Everyone else would be eating from the main menu, a bowl of unlimited salad followed by something like chicken and chips, or a burger, while Nana was tucking in to her lemon meringue sundae. I can’t stop my mouth from twitching in the corners. The way Grampy would order adessert he didn’t want, purely to share with her because she couldn’t decide what ice cream flavour to have as her main. Growing up, I’d always wanted a love like that. Like Nana and Grampy.
I grab my sunglasses out of my small handbag and cover my eyes against the people outside. I unlock my phone and navigate to Instagram. There are thousands of comments on my most recent photo. Even more than there were yesterday despite the photo being posted earlier this week in celebration of the new album,Your Email Didn’t Find Me Well.
And trust me, if someone emailed me in the last year, it probably did not find me well.
The comments make my stomach drop into my knees.
You fucking slut. He has a *CHILD*
Guys, she might not have known we don’t know the full story, let’s not be so quick to judge
Of course she knew don’t be so naive!
How does it feel knowing youve ruined a couples lives? There child is gonna have to live with this
Once again, Serena Martin takes whatever Serena Martin wants and doesn’t care what the consequences are for anyone else
Her name’s Sienna
Do I look like I care?
Omg didn’t him and Caro break up?
No!!!
I really regret buying her album now, it’s a great album but the thought of supporting her!! ICK!!!
I shut the phone away in my handbag. I count the freckles on my hand, cross and uncross my legs, trying to ignore the uncomfortable, prickly feeling all over my body. I want to dig my nails into my flesh, drag them across the skin until it rips under my own strength. Tearing it until I can crawl out and back into bed as though none of this ever happened. Wake up to a voicemail from Grampy that he’s sorry he missed me.
‘Sienna, can we please talk?’
I turn to face her, and Mauve’s face is almost earnest. Almost. Nearly like she’sactuallyconcerned about me.
‘What specifically do you want to know, Mauve?’
‘Why did you do it?’
Her words land heavily on my skin, bruising me all over. If this is how my mother is reacting, the rest of the world will be much worse. How am I going to go on tele tonight and talk about my new album like none of this ever happened? I shouldn’t have done it, granted, but this is something I got away with all the time in my twenties.
Like my first year at Glastonbury when I was playing the Other Stage – I’d kissed the drummer from the headline band in the VIP area in the early hours of the morning after the final night. I don’t even remember his name now, but I was applauded for almost a week after that kiss. Or when I was pictured enjoying some very public dates when I was twenty-three with a member of Two Fortune, the band who shot to fame after appearing on The X Factor. That boosted my album sales so much that my album from the previous year went back to number one.
‘Why did I kiss a man or why did I kiss that man specifically?’
‘Why did you kiss Benji Robert?’ Her voice is almost as tired as I feel.
I grab one of the emergency bottles of water from the compartment between the two front seats and pour half of it down my throat.
‘Because I was drunk, and he was nice to me, and he was flirting. And I didn’t kiss him. He kissed me and I went along with it.’
She looks at me like she couldn’t think of anything worse than remembering she birthed me and brought me up for all these years. Like she doesn’t recognise me.
‘He’s not with his wife,’ I explain, exasperated. ‘They’ve been on and off for years. I don’t know why they haven’t announced it, probably because they’re both hoping they’ll try again, but Benji is filing for divorce as soon as they’ve told the media they’re not together.’ I pick at a mark on my leg.
