Page 6 of A Lot to Unpack
I frown at him. He laughs it off.
‘It sounds like a scam. Probably a virus,’ he replies.
‘Should I show someone at work?’ I check. ‘Maybe Tom – or I could ask Erica?’
‘No,’ he replies quickly. ‘Just delete it. It can’t do anything, it’s only a photo, probably designed to get you to engage with the sender, so don’t. Delete it, block the number – I’ll do it for you. Give me your phone. Then we can get on with having a nice day, okay?’
I puff air from my cheeks, trying to make myself a little lighter, to trick my body into relaxing.
‘You’re right, you’re right,’ I reply. ‘Not about us having a nice day, because, y’know, we’re here, but about me deleting it and forgetting it. Sorry for overreacting. I think I’ve just heard so many horror stories at work, of people opening an email, then suddenly losing tens of thousands of pounds…’
‘You don’t have tens of thousands of pounds,’ he jokes. ‘So you’re good.’
‘Right, I’m deleting it now,’ I announce, unlocking my phone.
‘Let me do it for you,’ Ben says.
‘That’s okay,’ I reply. ‘I’m a big girl.’
‘Okay, but I don’t want my girlfriend looking at another man’s penis, so let me do it,’ he insists.
I don’t point out to him that he’s always looking at other men’s penises, if his search history is anything to go by. Not that I check up on him – if you have to check up on someone, you shouldn’t be with them – but I had to use his laptop recently and that autofill can be a bitch.
‘I’ve already seen it,’ I remind him. ‘And I’m going to delete it anyway. I won’t even open it again, I’ll just delete the message thread.’
‘Right, okay, good idea,’ he replies.
I appreciate him being – what? – gentlemanly and gallant, defending my honour or whatever – but it’s a bit much, and so out of character. I’m a big girl, I can take care of my own dick pics. Well, now that I’m getting over the initial panic and violation, anyway.
‘I’ll delete it, we’ll go to the party, and I’ll never think of it again,’ I say, clicking into the app like I’m simply checking the weather or something.
I swipe the message thread to the side, without opening it, first to block the sender and then finally to delete the messages, never to be seen again.
‘There – done,’ I announce.
‘Good,’ Ben replies. ‘Because your mum and dad will be here with our drinks in a minute, so if we could stop talking about dicks…’
‘A great idea,’ I say, relaxing more and more by the second, but then I hit it, the stumbling block, the brick wall that’s going to block me from actually relaxing.
‘One more thing, actually,’ I tell him, taking out my phone from my bag again, clicking into my photos because I’ve just remembered something. ‘It autosaves images I receive to my camera roll, so I need to delete the offending photo from there as well.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Ben says quickly, insistently, but it’s too late.
Is that…? It is! It’s not the penis in the small version of the photo that catches my eye, it’s the watch, that distinct, one-of-a-kind orange watch face with the crackled pattern through it. I open the photo properly. It’s on the wrist of the person holding the duvet up to proudly display their bang-average penis – yes, I’ve seen better and, yes, I’ve seen this one before. It’s Ben’s. That’s his penis, his watch, and now that I’m looking closely, that’s the duvet cover we have on our bed at home, so this has to have been taken very, very recently. And sent to someone else – someone who felt the need to send it to me, to show me what Ben has been up to behind my back, I guess.
I look up at him. His face is ghostly pale.
He knows that I know.
‘Liberty—’
‘Right, here we go,’ Dad’s voice booms behind us. ‘Drinks for everyone.’
I quickly lock my phone screen so no one can see what I’m looking at – not that I opted in to looking in the first place.
‘Brilliant, thanks,’ Ben replies. ‘So, what do you think of the match so far?’
Ben pats my dad on the back, almost ushering him away from us, and my dad is always happy to talk footie so he follows Ben’s lead.
