'What? Is it the car again? Jack can help.'
'No, not the car. The video. Well, it turns out I didn't set it to private. I put it on public by accident and now ten thousand people have watched it.'
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. ‘Sorry, what? I thought you said I was the only one who got to watch that and not to even show it to Jack. I thought you said you couldn’t work out how to do the private link thing. How can anyone have seen the video?’
‘I also uploaded it online just to see how it worked! Apparently, I put it on public, not private. I’ve said loads of things on there. I am literally talking to a wall!’
‘Nooooo!’
‘I know.’
‘Only you could do that.’
‘Right.’
'Ten thousand people?’ Penny swore. ‘What exactly is in this video?'
Darby slumped back in her chair and studied her nailbeds as if they might help her. ‘Everything. A lot of it, I ramble on feeling sorry for myself. The self-pity is off the scale! When I first did it I just started talking; about how empty the house feels, about eating toast for dinner, about rearranging cushions because I couldn't think of anything else to do. The whole miserable truth about what my life's like now the children have gone and I feel invisible. How down I’ve been. How I’ve had nothing to lose.'
'Oh, right, blimey. Can you take it down?'
'That's the thing. I could take it down, but you should see the comments. There are hundreds of them, all from women saying they feel exactly the same way. Women in their forties and fifties, saying I've put words to feelings they couldn't express, that they thought they were going mad feeling so lost and lonely. A few others, too, saying they’re in their forties and have youngfamilies and feel as if they don’t have the will to get up and do the same thing day after day.'
'Really?' Penny's voice perked up with interest. 'What sort of things are they saying?'
'All sorts. There's one woman who says she's been eating cereal for dinner for weeks because she can't be bothered cooking for one. Another who says she's been pretending to her family that she's fine since her youngest left for university.'
‘Wow.'
'It’s me rambling on about my feelings for twenty minutes. I was only making it for you anyway, to try to explain why I've been so odd lately. It was meant to help me focus.'
'Don't be daft, you haven't been odd. Hang on, let me get my laptop out. Right, I'll watch it now while we're on the phone.'
‘Promise me you'll be honest about what you think. I'm starting to wonder if I've completely lost the plot.'
'When have I ever not been honest with you?' Penny asked.
Darby could hear the clicking of laptop keys in the background. ‘Ahh!’
'Right, got it. Give me a minute to watch. Actually, I’m going to make a cup of tea and watch it. I’ll call you back.'
For the next twenty minutes, Darby unloaded the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen like a mad woman. Every few minutes, she kept tapping on the video to have another look. The comments section was active. New messages appeared every few minutes from women sharing their own stories. Her phone rang.
'Darbs! Why didn't you tell me you were feeling this bad?'
'I tried to, a bit, but I didn't want to be the miserable friend who brings everyone down.'
'You wouldn't have brought me down. I had no idea you were struggling this much. I mean, I knew you were having a hard time adjusting, but this, I don’t know what to say! Darbs, you sound so sad and so lost.'
'I was. Some days I wake up and feel like I'm disappearing, Pen. Like I forgot how to be Darby. At least, that's how it was when I filmed that, but now I feel better already. Crikey, I am finally losing the plot.'
'I wish you'd said something sooner.'
‘I’m fine. You know me.’
'The response is unbelievable. Look at those comments. Really look at them. You've started a conversation that obviously needed to happen. All these women feeling exactly the same way you do, and probably thinking they are the only ones. That's actually quite significant.'
Darby scrolled through the comments again, reading a few new ones that had appeared. ‘I guess.’
