Finally, Stephan appeared to reach a détente with the department head – at least if his parting words were anything to go by: ‘Fine! She’ll look like she’s selling fucking burka-inspired knickers but whatever. Keep your precious family audience happy.’ He slammed down the phone and wheeled around to Shelly. ‘Looks like you can keep your tits to yourself then.’
‘You’re making it sound like I was the one desperate to flash them around!’
Stephan snorted at this and Shelly felt a bit better. Aggro Stephan was a nightmare to handle.
‘Right, your nips are off the hook, Shelly, but we still want a bit of titillation – OK? Dee? You have the prosthetic nipples?’
‘Ah, yes, I have them somewhere – now let me see …’
‘What is a prosthetic nipple?’ Shelly tried to hide her distress. Why did she have to fight this oafish loon for even a modicum of dignity?
‘I’m looking for a very specific look with this scene, Shelly.’ Stephan slipped into his ‘serious director’ mode, grabbing a chair and turning it backwards so he could straddle it while he talked his special brand of shite. ‘I’m thinking a kind of Bernardo Bertolucci feel.’ He was making a most unfortunate cupping motion with his hands.
Amy had walked in just in time to catch the prosthetic-nipple chat and was looking scathingly at Stephan. ‘What, like Rachel inFriends? Total nipple domination?’
Shelly was delighted to see Amy. Stephan hated her and on cue he dismounted the chair and headed for the door. ‘Make sure you go for a light-coloured dress, Dee, to show off those nips,’ he called back.
Dee looked queasy as she rooted in a large plastic crate filled with Imelda’s jewellery and general accessories. ‘I put them in with the willy hairbands from that time Imelda had a hen party,’ she said, straightening up and proffering the curiously realistic-looking nipples.
‘Cool.’ Amy feigned mild interest before snapping into business mode. ‘Dee, can you give us a minute, please?’ Shelly was fussing with the nipples as Amy shunted Dee out the door.
‘Shelly, we’ve got a problem,’ Amy began, sounding oddly brusque.
Her tone jolted Shelly out of the nipple reverie. She raised an eyebrow and Amy continued.
‘This is awkward.’ She fiddled with her iPad cover, opening it and closing it again.
Shelly was immediately alarmed. ‘Awkward? I don’t think I’ve seen you looking awkward ever. You sat in on my pelvic exam last week to get shots for the account and looked positively bored.’
‘Yeah, yeah …’ Amy waved the image away. ‘Look, I know this isn’t your fault but my pay didn’t go through this month.’
‘Oh. What?’ Shelly was stunned. ‘I’m so sorry. I can fix that straight away – just let me get up the online banking.’
‘I’m not sure that’s going to work, Shelly. I was at the house this morning. I was getting a few pics of Georgie in her new outerwear for that #KidsUnplugged campaign and I ran into Dan.’
The implications were slowly dawning on Shelly. Why had Amy’s pay not been debited when it was a standing order every month? It came out of Dan and Shelly’s joint account. The same account all the money Shelly made went into. Shelly’s only account, as it were. Plum’s sage words on the eve of her and Dan’s wedding were echoing in her mind. ‘Always have a running-away account,’ she’d advised, dragging on her cigarette in her worldly Plum way. But Shelly had thought nothing more about it. At the time, she’d made next to no money compared with Dan. Of course that had all changed.
‘Oh my god.’ Shelly eased herself down into a chair. ‘He’s … what? Frozen the account?’
Amy nodded slowly. ‘Looks like it. He told me that he wasn’t going to bankroll me exploiting his family for one more second. He was pretty upset.’
Shelly could feel the tears coming and, even though it was going to mean a trip back to make-up to be touched up, she let them fall.
‘Goddamn him,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry, Amy. This whole thing is turning into such a mess. I have to get on to the solicitor – he can’t just do this.’
‘Yeah, I’m really sorry it’s going this way, Shel.’ Amy had never sounded so sincere – it was strange to see her so solemn. ‘Look, you never know, marriages go through phases. Like, my mam and dad went through a big phase of fighting with each other after the recession, and it definitely looked really dodgy for a while there, but they’re great now. I think Mam was on the verge of kicking him out but then she went to have her cards read, which is her version of counselling, and had some kind of epiphany.’
Shelly sighed. ‘I dunno which Dan would hate more: counselling or tarot cards.’ She tried to smile but found she couldn’t. ‘It’s just a really difficult time. I can’t lose him. Not with this baby on the way. But he can’t just expect me to ditch SHELLY after all we’ve put into it.’
‘Look,’ Amy’s eyes were fixed on the floor to her right, ‘I reckon I need to disappear for the foreseeable. I know the money’s not an issue in the grand scheme of things, but I think Dan won’t ever come around if things stay the way they are.’
‘Please don’t go.’ Doing SHELLY without Amy suddenly seemed as daunting to Shelly as losing Dan.
‘I’m absolutely not going, Shelly,’ Amy replied calmly. ‘I’ll just be taking a step back – you need to take over the reins for a while. Luckily, in the early days, I put together a contingency plan for this exact eventuality. I’ve set daily reminders for all the things you need to post to Insta. There’s files with a huge catalogue of #OOTDs with corresponding captions ready to copy and paste. There’s a folder with evergreen content, inspo quotes, #TBTs, attractive acai bowls and charcoal pastries on marble tables. I’ve set you up with a lot of stock stuff that you can push out as and when you need it. All I ask is that you don’t mess with the consistency, Shelly, OK? It’s been a while since you’ve managed this thing and TBH the audience is so much more on it now – like, if I’m three minutes late uploading the Thankful Thursday post, they’ll be in the DMs straight away.’
Shelly was slumping ever lower. ‘This sounds … so overwhelming.’
Amy came over and put her arms around Shelly. It was so completely un-Amy that Shelly had to laugh. ‘Shit, now I know it’s a crisis if you’re hugging me.’ Shelly smiled through her tears.
