‘It’s likeBlack Mirrorin here.’ Sam snorted with laughter and Ali struggled to hide her own giggles. He rounded on her, holding her upper arms and smiling as though he’d hit on some brainwave. ‘Hey, I have an idea! How about when we have our kid we actually look at it from time to time.’
They both glanced back at the family – Linda and the husband were still bent over their phones, while baby ‘Precious’, apparently despairing of her distracted parents, was wearily putting her own nappy back on.
‘Careful now, don’t be all smug,’ Ali warned. ‘Liv’s sister has kids and she says the phone’s a sanity saver, only thing keeping her from running away in the dead of night, according to Nella.’
‘Ali! So great to see you, and this must be Sam.’ Holly had descended and was already air-kissing him. Ali was glad of the interruption. As much as she and Sam were getting on well, she couldn’t quite quell the creep of unease in her stomach whenever he brought up the baby.
‘Hi, Holly, this is all gorgeous. And, yes, this is Sam.’ Ali was getting used to having an unwitting partner in crime for this whole thing and, well, life in general.
Sam, Ali had to admit, really grew on a person – even Liv liked him, sort of. This was good, as he’d been staying over loads over the last couple of weeks, like a real boyfriend. It was tricky for Ali, though, as she’d had to seriously curtail her single habits, not to mention clean her room.
When she talked about Sam on her Stories, her followers lapped it up – it turned out that introducing Sam and laying out the whole one-night-stand story had been inspired. It was a millennial fairy tale for the ages. Blending the ‘pregnancy journey’ with the ‘newly loved-up couples goals’ narrative effectively brought together two huge audiences and had rarely been seen on Instagram before. Her following had soared to 57K in the last three weeks, with couples content often matching the bump-journey stuff in terms of likes and comments.
She was finding her niche in a way that she never had in the old days. She’d introduced a regular diary-style show on her IGTV calledAli’s Real Talkin which she voiced her apprehension at the changes coming in the next few months. She’d even been commended for her ‘refreshing honesty’ on the Notions.ie’s Insta-watch column. In her chats about going from ‘terminally single’ to ‘playing house’, she of course omitted the biggest habit she’d had to curtail: her drinking. With Sam around more and a fake pregnancy well underway, her boozing had virtually evaporated by necessity, and she didn’t like how much she missed it. It was making her analyse the wine-love far more than she cared to. Still, Sam’s hand in hers at night, instead of the glass, was nice.
‘I’d love to intro you to Polly, Hazel and Shelly – they’re congregated in our little unofficial “VIP” area?’
‘Oooh, are we “VIPs”?’ asked Sam, mimicking her air quotes and winking.
‘Ha, LOL,’ said Holly and turned to lead them over to the Insta-mums who were sitting apart from the crowd while their children scampered nearby.
Sam sniggered and Ali shot him a meaningful look. ‘Zip it, Tinder,’ she whispered urgently, employing his pet name to make sure he knew she was being serious but wasn’t angry. ‘These are the mums who run this whole scene. I need to get in with them. I presume they hate each other but on the grid they are BFs and I need to get in on that.’
‘Hazel, Polly, Shelly! I’m not sure if you gals know each other but this is Ali from @AlisBaba, and Sam, her daddy bear.’
‘Hi!’ Sam waved. ‘Listen,’ he turned to Holly, ‘what does a bear have to do around here? Shit in the woods?’
‘What?’ Holly was alarmed.
Ali groaned. ‘He thinks he’s being funny.’ She noticed with relief that Shelly was laughing quietly at this. ‘The loos are in the main house.’
Sam winked and made his way through some entertainers doing face-painting and a magician – pointless, really, as most of the kids were plugged into YouTube.
Ali rolled her eyes at the Insta-mums. ‘He’s such a man.’
Moaning about her ‘daddy bear’ turned out to be a good opener. Hazel leapt in eagerly.
‘OMG, yes, Eugene doesn’t know how to behave!’ She waved over at a short bespectacled man in a suit attempting to kick a football with a young boy while talking into his phone and peering at some complicated-looking document. ‘He can’t leave the office for one bloody hour. That kid’s not even one of ours – not that he’d notice.’
Ali had never seen Eugene on Hazel’s Insta and now she could see why. He didn’t fit with Hazel’s earth-mama-by-way-of-LA-but-actually-living-in-Knocklyon aesthetic. He wasn’t an ex-rugby player, like the guy Polly touted around like a beefy prized accessory or a DILF like Dan Devine. Poor Eugene apparently bankrolled his wife’s exquisite life but didn’t match it and therefore was written out of the whole damn thing.
‘Sam’s an office man too,’ Ali offered brightly, seeing a chance for bonding. ‘Though I actually haven’t a clue what he does. They get free snacks. I think he’s in HR.’
‘What do any of them do?’ mused Hazel wearily. ‘What’s Dan doing, Shelly? He is here, yes?’ There was something of a challenge in this question. And for some reason, Shelly did look a little startled. Weird, Ali thought.
‘He’s on to the office as well.’ Shelly glanced across the lawn beyond the marquee where, up a grassy verge along the perimeter fence, a dark-haired figure was having an animated phone conversation. ‘Asia.’ Shelly shrugged by way of explanation. ‘So how is the pregnancy going, Ali? Any nausea? I think we’re just about the same way along.’ She lowered her voice. ‘My due date was 9/11 but Amy pushed it out by a week because, well, ya know, you couldn’t write that on a post. It’d die a death.’
Polly and Hazel nodded wisely.
‘Yeah, I’m around then as well.’ Ali found it far easier talking about being pregnant in the comfort of an Instagram Story to thousands of faceless watchers than face to face with even one person, never mind three of the most influential people in the Insta-sphere. ‘I’ve been feeling grand mostly. Sam’s really up on pregnancy things and is making me mainline folic acid and stuff like that.’
‘Yeah, everyone seems to love Sam, don’t they?’ Hazel’s eyes were steely as she glared over at the hapless Eugene. ‘You’ve done well there. So what else do you have up your sleeve? I see you were touting a few beauty bits during the week – what are you charging for a post?’
Ali felt edgy. This Hazel person was nothing like her Insta-profile. This was the woman who had been talking about her jade yoni egg only this morning on Insta and shiteing on about putting rose quartz in the pot when she was making her weekly batch of bone broth. Ali had the distinct feeling she was being pumped for information and it was giving her The Fear.
The Fear, in fairness, had become an ever-present spectre in the past weeks. Ali was painfully aware that the fake pregnancy lie was at its most manageable in this very moment. At two months, she didn’t need to start showing – she had feverishly googled this on many anxious nights secretly slugging wine and tapping on the phone. However, the problem was that people like bumps in their bump content. Faking this for #OOTDs would be fine if Sam hadn’t managed to make himself a fixture in her life so rapidly.
Every day she had the unshakeable sense that she was inching ever closer to all-out disaster. And having to make an impossible choice between a fake baby or a real man. But even if she decided that Sam was more important than her #bumpjourney, that wasn’t without its complications. However devious lying about a positive pregnancy test was, Ali knew that she couldn’t, just couldn’t, fake something happening to the pregnancy – that was just too dark, even for her. So Sam would need an explanation. But what?
