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Cam

‘OK, love, that’s all the shelves up,’ says Cam’s dad, coming out of her bedroom. She’s sitting in the window seat of her gorgeous new flat, wondering where to put the chaise longue she found on eBay that just got delivered. ‘Need anything else before I go?’

‘No thanks, Dad. That’s it.’ She looks at him lovingly. ‘It doesn’t matter how grown up I am, I’ll always need my dad to come and put my shelves up for me, won’t I?’

‘I hope so. Even if you don’t, you always have to pretend you still need me, OK?’ he says, going over to her for a cuddle. They both know Cam is as good at DIY as he is. Her asking him to help is always for his benefit, not hers.

‘I’m so proud of you, Camilla. I worked all my life and I’m not sure I ever achieved as much as you have.’

‘You kept four daughters alive, Dad. I’d say that was a pretty big achievement.’

‘Yup, my life certainly became about you guys, that’s for sure.’

Cam looks at him sympathetically. She’s always been so tuned-in with her dad, much more than her siblings were. Before Tanya was born, the oldest of Cam’s three sisters, he worked as a comedy promoter all over the country. It wasn’t stable work, and involved lots of late nights that didn’t work well with a baby, so he quit. Not really being qualified in anything, he got a job in a local school as a caretaker, and was there until he retired four years ago. He never enjoyed it; it was uncreative, hard and demanding. But he stuck with it, because he’s a great dad, and that’s the kind of sacrifice people make when they have kids.

‘I always told you that success is just being happy, didn’t I?’ he says. ‘People put too much emphasis on it being about money. I was never rich, but you guys were all healthy and happy and no matter what I ended up having to do during the day, coming home to that made me feel like the wealthiest man alive.’

‘Yup, you always said that,’ Cam says. She knows he doesn’t really mean it. If it had been down to him, he’d have carried on promoting comedy and they’d all have made do. But Cam’s mum wanted stability, and her dad is a good enough guy not to argue with that. ‘But I fucking love being rich,’ she says, giving him a gentle dig in the ribs.

They both laugh.

‘Don’t let your mum hear you use that language,’ he says, and of course she never would. Cam and her dad have always shared the same sense of humour and a mutual understanding. He’s the only person in her family who doesn’t question her choices, and she’s desperately in love with him because of that.

‘You were always different from the others, Camilla. You stuck to your guns, never tried to be what people expected of you. I’m proud of you, kid.’

‘Jesus, Dad! Will you stop. I’ve just moved in, no tears are allowed in this flat, even happy ones.’ They hug again. Before she pulls away she whispers in his ear, ‘Thank you.’

‘What are you thanking me for? You did this all by yourself.’

‘I did, yes. But because you always encouraged me to be myself. I’m not like the other girls, and you let me work out how to be happy my own way.’

‘I had no choice. There was no other way you could be,’ he says, as he leaves their embrace and heads for the door. ‘Call me if you need anything else doing, OK?’

‘I will.’

‘And don’t have any boys round.’

‘Oh, Dad! OK, go. Mum will shout at you for being late for dinner. I love you. Bye.’

Cam pushes him out of the door. ‘Careful on the stairs,’ she says as she closes it, and leans back against it when it’s shut. Looking around her flat, she lets a huge smile creep across her face. A 1.2 million, two-bedroom, Victorian flat in Highgate, with views across London. She’s sourced furniture from the period the house was built, and she’s mixing that with huge pieces of bold, modern art. It’s bright, beautiful and all hers. It’s in an area of London people only dream of living in. She can’t believe it.

Falling back onto the pea green, Victorian-style chaise longue, she reaches for her laptop and rests it on her thighs. Opening HowItIs.com, she gloats at what it has become. It not only earns her in the region of £20,000 a month in advertising revenue, but it also earns her notoriety, an audience. It gives her a voice. Cam was never great with people, but she always had a lot to say. This unfortunate mix made school tough going; someone with a head full of thoughts but no outlet for them tends to think too much and say too little. In her case, this personified itself as social awkwardness that other kids saw no fun in, so she inevitably became a bit of a loner. Until the Internet burst onto the scene in her early twenties and she finally had a way to show the world who she really was, a chance to express herself without the pressure of social interaction. It completely changed her life.

There are boxes stacked up along the walls, and the TV is still in the box on the floor. Her Internet won’t be connected for a few days, so she’s using a dongle, meaning she’ll never be anywhere she can’t blog from. This commitment to her output is what’s made her what she is.

As one of the first successful lifestyle bloggers, she has held her place as the ‘go-to destination for straight-talking women’. Or so said The Times in their list of ‘what’s hot for the year ahead’. ‘The Cam Stacey seal of approval is what every woman wants …’ (Guardian, Jan 2016). With nearly two million subscribers and eight major advertisers signed up, she is raking in the pennies and clawing in the love. But that isn’t to say she doesn’t have to be careful. Blogging is a dangerous game, especially if you’re talking about women and being as outspoken as Cam so often is. Women want role models; they get behind high-profile females who pave the way for forward thinkers and they hail them as heroes, but if they drop the ball, say the wrong thing or talk a little too controversially, they get thrown to the lions.

It happened to a friend of hers last year. A lovely woman, Kate Squires. She wrote about being a working mum, with a high-powered job in a PR firm, and became a real inspiration, with nearly 50,000 Twitter followers. Working mums everywhere looked to Kate for positive inspiration on how to ‘juggle’ the work–life balance, but then one day she fucked it all up with one little tweet. One silly little tweet that changed the course of her life.

Women without kids, u just don’t understand how hard it is to get home & have to look after something other than yourself. #NeedMeTime

The infertile population of the planet came out in their droves. Kate had personally offended every woman with reproductive issues on Twitter and beyond. What she had said was so hurtful that The Times covered a story of one woman who, after three miscarriages, tried to commit suicide after reading Kate’s tweet. ‘It just struck me when I was so, so down,’ she’d said. ‘I felt like society was telling me I have no value as a woman because I can’t have kids.’

People were right to be offended – it was an insensitive thing to say, but did she deserve an online hate campaign and the succession of terrible things that happened next? Cam followed the case with sympathy but a sharper eye on what she could learn. That tightrope between leading the social commentary and following it is hard to walk. It takes focus, planning and careful attention to detail not to fall off when you live in a world where 140 characters could ruin your life.

Kate wrote the customary, ‘I didn’t mean to hurt anyone, I just had a really hard day,’ tweet, but it didn’t do any good. She went on Loose Women and made some heartfelt but slightly pathetic apology wearing a floral dress and batting her best Princess Diana eyes. On leaving the studio, she was confronted by campaigners with placards saying ‘NON-MOTHERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO’. This was televised on almost every news channel and Kate’s image was branded as the face of society’s issues with childless women. She appealed to be forgiven, but social media just couldn’t do it. Within weeks, she was offline and out of sight. Her PR firm sacked her, saying it was impossible to have someone with a public image like Kate’s representing them. She’s now out of work and struggling to get a job, her husband left her because she went so nuts, and she lives in a small flat in south London as opposed to her big house in Penge. Kate barely answers the phone; Cam hasn’t spoken to her for months. Her whole life turned upside down because of one sleepy little tweet.

Cam watched and learned.

She’s managed to find that careful balance of pushing boundaries, being brave, but not offending. Of course she gets the occasional knob who hates her, but she’s generally strong enough to ignore those. She’s often the target of more conservative feminists who seem to think her attitude to sex is why so many men sexually abuse women, but Cam’s aim is to promote the many facets of modern feminism, and pissing off ‘The Traditionalists’ is just a part of that. Even the rape threats she got after writing quite a punchy piece about Bill Cosby didn’t knock her down. It would take a lot more for someone to turn up at her door and physically assault her than it does for them to tweet, ‘I’d bend you over a car and make you sorry for saying that.’

Most people online are full of shit. Part of survival in the digital age is to fully appreciate that, and Cam’s down with it. But women’s rights are a delicate subject. There is one fight – feminism – but there are many different types of woman, and pleasing them all is impossible.

Just as her eyes are falling closed, she gets a text.

This must be yours, it’s got your name on it. Want it back?

Attached is a picture of her twenty-eight-year-old lover’s erect penis; he has written CAM around the base in felt-tip pen. She thinks of her 600-count cotton sheets and hopes that it is washable …

bring pizza and penis x

Suddenly, she’s not so tired.

Stella

‘I’ll get the cod fritters and the lamb,’ I tell the waiter taking our order. He’s been standing there for ages, waiting for me to decide what to have. It’s my birthday, I’m allowed to be annoying. I’m also trying to kill some time; Phil is being weird and Jessica is being excitable, and I’m not really in the mood for either of them.

‘Sooooo, Mike and I have some news,’ says Jessica, my oldest friend, the only one who made any particular effort with me after Alice died, and didn’t make it all about her. She’s one of those rare and extraordinary people who genuinely likes herself, and doesn’t rely on affirmation from pretend friends. She’s sweet, but her energy levels are challenging. Phil doesn’t understand why I haven’t told her what I’m going through, why he alone is shouldering the knowledge of my family legacy. But it’s not straightforward with Jessica; she’s never experienced trauma. She’s a good friend because she’s loyal, but trying to talk to her about my life makes me feel like the most fucked-up person of all time. What is the point in sharing your pain with someone who can’t empathise anyway? One of the reasons I got together with Phil was because his dad died when he was fourteen. Something in his tragedy allowed me to open up about mine. And anyway, he’s my boyfriend, it’s his job to take the burden of my problems. The only thing Jessica and I really have in common is history, but as Phil so often says, I should have at least one female friend, so here I am, about to hear her announcement.

Phil stiffens and goes to leave the table, but I put my hand on his knee and make him stay. I need him to stay. Whether we are falling apart or not, he is my partner, and I need a partner. One person by my side. I’m not enough on my own.

‘I’m pregnant,’ Jessica bursts, as if we didn’t know what it means when a newlywed says she ‘has some news’. She’s so happy, it’s oozing out of her. I know I can be a real bitch in situations where people around me express joy, so I try not to do that to Jessica; she doesn’t deserve it.

‘Congratulations,’ I say, leaning across the table and taking her hand in some weird, regal way. ‘When are you due?’ I ask, doing my best not to look jealous.

‘January 1st. I bet it comes New Year’s Eve, the party animal,’ she says, snuggling up to Mike, who is also incredibly nice if quite boring. He is smiling, looking happy as anything with his new wife and embryo. In contrast, Phil is playing with his fork like a six-year-old staring at an iPad. I feel the need to overcompensate for both of us, so I get up, walk around the table and give Jessica a proper hug. ‘So happy for you,’ I say, reaching over to Mike and hugging him too. ‘You’ll be the best parents.’

‘Thanks, we are so happy. Now hurry up you two, this little one is going to need a playmate,’ she says, beaming.

‘Yup, we’re on it,’ I say, a little too enthusiastically. Phil drops the fork and starts reading the menu, even though we have already ordered. He used to be so sociable, so upbeat. It’s what attracted me to him. I need that person by me, someone more flamboyant, more attractive to others, more sociable. It’s how Alice was. Her social skills made us the most popular girls in school. Everyone wanted to hang out with the Davies Twins. But in truth, they liked the novelty of twins but only one of the set. I wasn’t a good friend to people like Alice was. My spiky nature didn’t draw them in like her warmth did. Without her, I would never have been popular. When she died, it didn’t take long for it to be screamingly obvious that without a more likable counterpart, no one was bothered about keeping me as a friend. Apart from Jessica, whom I keep sweet to stop Phil trying to set me up with other potential girl mates, because he thinks that is what I need.

‘OK, who is the birthday girl?’ says the waiter, coming back to the table. He’s carrying a bottle of champagne and four glasses.

‘That’ll be that one,’ says Mike, pointing at me. Jessica grins at him.

‘Wow, champagne? Thanks,’ I say, rubbing Phil’s leg. He hasn’t done anything like this in a while. Romantic gestures used to be quite normal.

‘No, what?’ he says, looking concerned. ‘We didn’t order this?’

‘No you did not! A “Jason Scott” called the bar and asked us to bring this over,’ the waiter says, clarifying. I feel myself blush a little, I’m not sure why.

‘Ooooooh, that’s so sweet,’ says Jessica. ‘Maybe I’m allowed a tiny glass?’ she says, looking to Mike for approval. He nods, and the waiter starts to pour. ‘So, is Jason still as dreamy as ever?’ Jessica asks.

‘Ha!’ I say, genuinely touched by the gesture; a little gobsmacked, if I’m honest. ‘Yeah, he’s still pretty dreamy. But no, weird, he’s my boss. And I’ve only got eyes for Phil. Cheers.’ I hold up my glass, but only two join it in the air. A huge screech fills the restaurant as Phil scrapes his chair back and stands up.

‘Sorry,’ he says, realising he caused a scene. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ He walks off quickly towards the toilets, and I sit alone with Jessica and Mike, trying to pretend like everything is normal.

Tara

‘I’ll come pick you up by noon tomorrow,’ I say to Annie, kissing her goodbye.

‘Come any time, we’ll take the dog out in the morning and have bacon and eggs,’ says Mum. She’s so brilliant, despite finding my choices and lifestyle almost impossible to think about. She’s so desperate for me to find a father figure for Annie that she has agreed to have her every Friday night so that I can go on dates. ‘Just don’t tell your father about this,’ she tells me every week as I leave the house. ‘You know he can’t bear to think of you with boys. The fact you got pregnant as you did, well, it nearly killed him. You proved all fathers right!’

She’s funny, my mother. Somewhere between liberal and conservative and I never really know which way she’ll go.

‘I know, Mum. If you could remind him that I’m forty-two, that would be great. Anyway, look at what we got out of it?’ We both peek through the hall door and into the living room. Annie is taking selfies on Mum’s iPhone.

‘She needs a father figure,’ Mum says.

‘She doesn’t need one, Mum, we’re fine. But it would be nice for her to have one. And it would also be nice for me not to die alone.’

‘Do you have a date set up for tonight?’ she asks.

‘I do. He looks OK, works in media, cute. Hopefully not a murderer.’

‘Tara, please. Don’t joke. I read about a girl getting murdered on a date. It’s not funny.’

‘Mum, people have been dating a long time. But OK, I’ll try not to get murdered.’ I open the front door. ‘Give my love to Dad.’ I shut the door, then quickly open it again. ‘By the way, what does he think I do on Friday nights?’

I’m curious to know what Mum came up with, because she’s right, the idea of me being with men makes my dad convulse.

‘I told him you’ve started a knitting group.’

‘What? Mum, that’s pathetic.’

‘You might have to buy something on eBay and pretend you made it for his birthday. Sorry, I panicked. It was the first thing that came to my head.’

I hug her, and leave. She opens the door a few seconds later and shouts, ‘You don’t have to sleep with them all, Tara!’ down the street.

Was that liberal or conservative? I can’t quite be sure.

Back at home I have a quick shower, slip on a cute silk shirt with my faux-leather trousers, a bit of make-up, bouff my hair and I’m ready. I gave up making too much effort on dates ages ago. I always wonder what it must look like to guys, who just wear whatever they wore to work that day, when a woman arrives dressed to the nines in something fancy, with loads of make-up. It sets a precedent at the start that I really can’t be bothered to maintain, so I wear a mildly more uptempo version of my usual clothes. I think that’s right. Although I’m still single, so I guess that says something.

Being single when you have a kid is weird. Not just because everyone you meet either judges or sympathises with you, but because you have to think about so much more than just fancying someone. It’s called being responsible, I suppose. I can’t allow fuck buddies into my home to meet my daughter, it would be too confusing for her, so I generally don’t have them at all. That’s good for Annie but it sucks for me.

Annie has never known me to be in a relationship, so I need to handle the situation carefully. I introduced one guy to her last year because he was so completely awesome. I seemed to abandon all elements of fear when it came to Annie and invited him into our lives. Turns out he was so awesome that he was married. Because obviously, excellent men in their forties are never single. Why would they be? Fuckers.

He spent a Saturday afternoon in my house making Annie laugh so hard she went to bed giddy with joy. When she was asleep he and I started having sex and halfway through, his phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Eventually, because it was really killing the mood, he answered it, then burst out crying. It was his wife letting him know that his dad had just had a heart attack and died. He was literally inside me as he took the call. I mean, it was possibly the worst thing to happen during sex since those two people in China were doing it up against a floor-to-ceiling window in their apartment and the window fell out. He was so devastated, I couldn’t even have a go at him about not telling me he was married. I had to comfort him, when what I really wanted to do was cut his penis off with some nail scissors and throw it in the road. I was also just really, really gutted.

He left minutes later and I never heard from him again. Annie still asks for him; she refers to him as ‘Mr Giggles’. One day I’ll tell her that Mr Giggles ended up being about as funny as a dose of the clap. Which, along with the terrible memory of a horrible evening, he also left me with.

Taking treatment for an STD when you have a little girl feels grim. I felt ridden and contagious and begged the bottle of antibiotics to be finished. When they were gone, I vowed never to introduce her to anyone ever again unless a) I was certain they didn’t have a wife and b) I hadn’t needed an STD test after sleeping with them.

I now hold a lot of hope for my Friday night dates. I want someone good. Someone honest, safe and fun. You never know; tonight’s guy, Al, looks OK in his picture. But first, a quick drink with my best friend Sophie.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ says Sophie, walking slowly up to me at the bar. ‘I was getting my hair done, she was taking ages then I decided I didn’t like the colour so got her to go back to … anyway, heyyyy.’

Sophie is always late, which is why I brought my Kindle.

Sophie and I are both only children. This means that we have a relationship a lot like sisters and claimed each other around the age of ten, as the people who would play that role in each other’s lives. I questioned it loads, because she drove me so crazy half the time. Then another friend at school said that if her sister wasn’t family, they would never be friends, but she loved her anyway, because that is what sisters do. That really resonated with me because I realised that if Sophie was to be the sister I never had, it was OK and normal for us to not always see eye to eye. I just had to love her, which I did and still do, because we have history – and you can’t erase that, no matter how many times someone prioritises a blow dry over spending time with you.

‘Hair looks nice,’ I say, because it does. It always does, she’s gorgeous. Skinny, blonde, perfect skin. It’s annoying, but mostly natural. Other than the hair colour.

‘Thanks. OK, can we drink champagne? I feel like I need something fizzy.’

I order two glasses but she shouts for a bottle. So there we are, sitting at a bar at 6.40 p.m. on a Friday, drinking champagne for no real reason.

‘I only have twenty minutes. I have a date with a guy called Al at seven.’ I smile a little, I have that pre-date hopeful buzz … maybe it will be a good one. But probably not.

‘God, I can’t believe you’re still dating, I can’t even imagine,’ she says. ‘Mind you, I never really dated like you do. Carl was my only ever formal date and I ended up marrying him, so it clearly works. Cheers to that!’

I still can’t accept that Sophie is married; she was so wild, almost feral. I don’t think I have ever met anyone with such a hungry attitude towards sex and partying. Her stamina for both was always fascinating to me.

‘So how is Carl?’

‘He’s good, yeah. You know, same old. Marriage is fine most of the time, as long as I don’t mention my past.’

‘Still, really?’

‘Yup, it’s the big sexy elephant in the room. I mean he doesn’t know anything of course, I’d never tell him. But he’s made all these assumptions about me, and the kinds of things I used to get up to. Annoyingly, they’re all pretty accurate.’

‘But where’s he getting it all from?’ I ask.

‘He says he can’t understand how someone who looks like me didn’t get loads of sex when I was single.’

‘OK, you know that is actually quite insulting, right?’ I say, as I realise it is insulting, but that Carl is absolutely right. Sophie got a lot of sex.

‘Yesterday, Beth Taylor, remember her from school? She tagged me in an old photo on Facebook. It’s a picture of a load of us, we were about seventeen, and in the background I’m snogging some guy. She tagged me and wrote, “This is how I remember you, Sophie. Hope you’re well.” What a fucking idiot, why would she do that?’

‘Yeah, I saw that. I thought it was funny. And I suppose most people in their forties aren’t married to people who would give them a hard time for snogging someone when they were seventeen?’

‘True. Maybe, but still. I have to be so careful. He’s just so old fashioned and I need this to work. It’s just easier if I edit my past a little. The fucking Internet means I have to be on guard all the time. Anyone could tweet me, or post a picture of me from back then. Do you remember that time we went to Ibiza, the foam party? Thank God it was just before camera phones, but what if someone had one of those disposable cameras we all used to have and stumbles across me on Facebook? There’s probably pictures of me up to all bloody sorts. Jesus, I told Carl I’d never done drugs. He’d lose his shit if he knew the kind of stuff we used to do. As it is, every time a Facebook memory comes up I break into a cold sweat!’

I drink some champagne. ‘Hey, we had fun though, didn’t we?’ I say, giving her a wink.

‘I’ll drink to that!’

I don’t know how Sophie does it, being married to someone who won’t accept her for who she is. Playing a new role, with a new past. Watching Sophie coordinate her life around hiding who she was – is? – from her husband has been such a lesson to me, in terms of what I want. There is no way I want to find someone who won’t take me for what I am. I don’t want to have to lie, or hide, or deny anything. Sophie would never admit it, but she married Carl because she partied her entire life and isn’t qualified for anything she would enjoy, so a rich city guy was the only way she’d end up in a nice house and money to buy bottles of champagne when you only have twenty minutes to drink it in, and absolutely nothing to celebrate. I’d rather be poor and lonely.

‘OK, I better go, don’t want to be late for my hot date,’ I say, stepping down off the barstool. ‘Here’s some money for the champagne.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, that’s what this is for,’ she says, flashing Carl’s credit card. ‘Oh, and if he asks can you tell him we were with a bunch of people? It would make things easier.’

‘Sophie, we’ve been best friends since we were at primary school, does he still not like us going out together?’

‘Nope. When it’s only us he presumes we get up to bad stuff, that you’re a bad influence. Don’t look at me like that! Please, just say it was a few old faces from school. The more eyes he thinks are on me, the better he’ll think I behaved, OK?’

I sit back down.

‘It’s quite controlling, Sophie. It worries me,’ I say, forcing her to look me in the eye. She offers a little smile, then breaks away.

‘Maybe I need a bit of controlling?’ she says, sipping the champagne. ‘I can’t be left to my own devices, who knows what would happen.’ She shoots me a critical look, and I know what she means. We partied hard for most of our lives, but after I had Annie I had to stop. It became immediately clear that despite being wild myself, I was nothing compared to Sophie. Somehow, over the years I had stopped her from spiralling too far out of control. I hadn’t even realised I did it, but I took her home when she’d had too much, I dragged her out of bedrooms she shouldn’t have been in, I stopped her snorting more lines of coke than she should, prised shot glasses out of her hand. When I got pregnant, there was no one around to do that for her and we saw the danger of that instantly. I was six months gone when I found myself in A&E one Friday night. The hospital called me at two a.m., saying she’d been found in an alley with her skirt around her waist, so out of it she could barely say her name. I’d gone in immediately and found her crying in the hospital bed. She’d been roofied by a barman in a club. There were no signs that he’d done anything sexual to her, but judging by the bump on her forehead and the state of her clothes, he had obviously tried.

‘I can’t look after myself,’ she’d said, pathetically, looking up at me from the bed. ‘And you can’t look after me any more, so I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

I took her home and I did look after her, for a whole week. But then she went back to her place, to ‘start afresh’. She was determined to change, to grow up. There were a few more ‘incidents’, but then she met Carl. They were married within a year, and now she is being looked after as she wished, and as uncomfortable as it makes me feel, I know she is probably better off for it. And she does love him, because he’s rich.

‘He’s good to me in other ways,’ she says, flashing the card again. ‘I’m happy, I promise. I love you.’

‘I love you too,’ I say, loyally. ‘I have to go.’

She pours herself another drink, and I remind myself it’s not my problem any more.

I walk into the Sanderson Hotel on Berners Street and look around the bar. This place is way more fancy than anywhere I would choose; I’m more a pub girl than a bar girl but hey, I’m not going to say no to posh drinks in a nice place if that is what the gentleman so wishes. I’m here to meet Al; his picture was nice, he works in the media, and he was free tonight. Those are three great reasons to go on a date, as far as I’m concerned. Mostly the bit about his picture being nice, of course.

I scan the bar and see him. He’s cute, but the photo was obviously an old one. His hair is much longer now, and his face much older. But that’s OK. I don’t judge people for using the most flattering photo of themselves for online dating, of course they do. Therefore, I always expect to be a little bit disappointed in real life, and hope their personality makes up for it. Al certainly looks older than his photo, but as I get closer to him, I realise he’s really, really gorgeous.

‘Hi,’ I say, sitting on the stool next to him. ‘This is so fancy, do you come here often?’

I’m joking. Obviously. No one ever actually says, ‘Do you come here often?’ He looks a little surprised that I take a seat. Was I supposed to ask his permission?