Steffi
You see, this is the problem with posh glass houses – there’s nowhere to hide. I desperately need to call Rosa but the downstairs bathroom’s engaged, the upstairs one is off-limits, and I don’t know which bedrooms contain napping infants. I end up sneaking out of the glass doors, muttering ‘holy fuck’ as I step into the heat. I crouch run across the decking, basically ninja roll down the steps, and end up whispering my very important conversation at the back of the garden, behind a half-dead tree.
‘I know it’s a huge decision so I wanted to give you as much time as I can,’ I tell Rosa, sucking both my stomach and arse in so the tree will disguise me. If I move my head even slightly, the party can see me through the glass wall.
‘I really want to say yes to Nina,’ Rosa repeats. ‘I love her.’
‘I know. I love her too. But what Mountain Scape Studio are offering is huge. Even bigger than her. We’re talking a Hollywood blockbuster, Rosa, with associated budget. Nina is amazing but her studio is still on the smaller side. She won’t put up this much money.’
‘But . . . I trust her with this.’
I smile to myself. It’s crazy how my job can change a person in only a few short hours. When I called Rosa on the train platform, she still couldn’t believe she was going to get published at all. Fast forward two hours and she’s now not even considering a multi-million-pound film deal with one of the biggest studios in the world.
‘Nina is amazing and her offer is an amazing thing,’ I tell her. ‘In another universe, one where you weren’t the most talented human being I’ve ever shared oxygen with, we’d be face-down in a bath full of champagne right now.’ Rosa giggles softly down the phone. Good. I need her back down to earth, so she can think properly. ‘But I’ve never seen a film pre-empt like this in my whole career,’ I continue, ‘And, not to be weird, I’m really good at my job. Mountain Scape are aggressive though. It will only be on the table until the end of Monday. It’s huge, Rosa. I just want you to really think it through.’
We talk a while longer until my stomach hurts from holding it in so tightly. We weigh up the things most authors want to weigh up – who will treat the book the most authentically during the adaptation? Who might let them co-write? Who is likely to play the main character? Who understood the book the most? I get all that, I do. I’m in the arts. I love books. But still, I’m an agent. And it’s my job to only really care about, a) how much money, and b) who is most likely to get it green lit? Because getting the TV show or film actually made is what brings in more money.
‘I’ll think about it, I promise,’ she reassures me. ‘I . . . it’s a lot. I still can’t believe my book is going to be in a book shop.’
‘Your book is going to be on a billboard in Times Square.’
She shriek laughs. ‘Stop it. A book shop is enough for today. I’m going to go for a walk around Brockwell Park. Calm myself down and have a think.’
‘Get an ice-cream.’
‘Are you kidding? It’s ￡4.50 for a 99 cone these days.’
‘Rosa, you’re about to turn down one actual million pounds. You can buy the ice cream.’
‘Today doesn’t seem real. OK. A ridiculously overpriced cone and a think, I promise.’
‘I’m here.’ I remind her. ‘I’m at this party thing, but I can sneak out again and chat to you if need be.’
‘Thank you.’
When she rings off, I collapse onto the dried grass, allowing myself my own moment to ride the adrenaline wave. I have to be calm for Rosa, but my body feels like a human party popper. I look out over the sprawling vista to try and stop my brain flailing about from strategy to strategy. I need to hire a real PA, and a film agent, and a foreign rights agent already. Could I poach Anna from JK? No. Stop it, . STOP IT. Don’t rush ahead. Focus on the view. This view would be amazing if our country wasn’t everything David Attenborough has been trying to warn us about. There’s not an inch of green left in these rolling fields, just parched yellow rectangles, sewn together by browning hedgerows. Even Nicki’s parents’ lawn has fallen. They’re the sort of law-abiding people who keep to a hosepipe ban, even though there’s no one out here to see them cheating. That glass house must be heavily soundproofed because I can’t hear a thing from the seven circles of hell inside. Dante’s Inferno but with fertilised cupcakes. And that’s just the first circle. We’ve not got to the vagina pinata yet, but I saw it flapping in the tiny breeze on the decking. I find baby showers trying at the best of times, but today’s really does feel beyond satire.
It’s not that I’m against celebrating pregnancy, or weddings, or hen dos, or all the other parties I’ve dutifully attended – but not particularly enjoyed – since I turned twenty-seven when suddenly these things started demanding most of my weekends. They are beautiful things. Huge, wonderful life moments in my treasured friends’ lives. They were just so generic. So .. . gendered. So utterly lacking in any uniqueness, despite everyone’s best efforts to make theirs different. Hive mind, groupthink, spoon-fed desires. And so, I’ve ended up attending precisely the same wedding multiple times. I could attend a wedding in my sleep, and a baby shower in my nap – they are so paint by numbers. Admittedly, today incudes every single paint colour and every number up until infinity but still none of it feels new. I turn my face up to the glaring sunshine, trying to time it so I get a good vitamin D hit but not too much to cause wrinkles, and I let myself feel hurt. Hurt that a party like this has never been thrown for me because I’ve not yet achieved any paint-by-number life achievement. Mum always warned me not to fall for the trap of these paths. ‘The things people think make them happy, often don’t,’ she always said. ‘Make sure you want things because you want them, , not because everyone tells you to want them.’ She’d always been so honest about the hardships of being a single mum. ‘Even married women are single mothers,’ she told me. ‘You just wait and see when you get older. See how your mother friends will end up basically doing it all themselves, just with the veneer of a husband and therefore society’s blessing.’ Mum always reassured me that I’m the best thing she ever did, but she was brutally open about the sacrifices. ‘I never want you to make any sacrifices,’ she’d whispered, over and over, year after year, as she got more frail until it was my time, finally, to look after her. ‘I never want you to be held back, . Wings clipped. Stuck in a house, using feathers to make a nest rather than using them to fly.’ And how I’ve flown, darling Mum – making you proud wherever you are now. I’m soaring so high but my career achievements have never warranted today’s level of command performance. At my agency launch party last month, Charlotte didn’t do all of this for me. And, even though I’d maxed out my credit card to pay for it as I had to pretend I was already successful, not all the Little Women even bothered to come. Lauren used Woody as an excuse – some shit about he wasn’t weaned yet so she couldn’t miss the bedtime routine. I have sympathy for that, I really do. However, I know that if it was my wedding or my baby shower, then she’d have pushed through whatever torture required to make sure she attended, like she’s done for today. I wouldn’t want her to do that, but the fact she didn’t even think about trying showed that me setting up Foxxy Books wasn’t in the same league as getting married or pregnant. And, yeah, Charlotte came and was so excited and manic that several publishing people came up to me afterwards to tell me they were ‘ obsessed ’ with her, but she only brought a bouquet of flowers with her. God, I know I sound like a bitch, and they were lovely flowers, but they were what? Forty quid? Picked up from Victoria Station on the way. No homemade fertilised cupcakes for me. Throughout our friendship, I’ve paid to attend all their hen dos, which were multiple hundreds of pounds, even the low-key ones. I’ve attended all their weddings . . . again, multiple hundreds of pounds. Lauren had her wedding in frickin’ Cornwall to get a ‘beach vibe’ so Tristan felt more at home and booked it for a Saturday in July. Do you know how much it costs to stay in a hotel, in Cornwall, at the weekend, in July? Then there was her spa baby shower too. All the money. My money. And I don’t care. I’m happy for them, I really am. But a bouquet of flowers? When I’m achieving things so beyond possible for most people? When I’m being so brave rather than so generic ? Nicki turned up to my party two hours late. Late! Can you imagine turning up hours late to a wedding? Friendship over. All I’d asked from them was to attend a party, in a bar, centrally located, from 6.30pm until 10pm, to support the hugest thing I could ever do in my life . . . and I get some flowers, a late arrival, and a flake out.
But it’s too hot to stay out here getting angry. I love these women, I remind myself. I do. We just need to survive our thirties, when all our lives are so different, and come through the other side.
The tiny breeze has died down, stopping the gentle thwacking sound of the paper maché vulva hitting the glass. The air’s so still I can now hear the party through the glass. I check my phone once more and feel both elated and disappointed I’m on Inbox Zero. No new offers in yet. God, I’m just as bad as Rosa. Yesterday I was desperate just to get this book published with enough commission to pay myself at the end of the month. Now I’m pissed off I’ve not been offered a million pounds in the last fifteen minutes.
I use the tree to yank myself up, the bark rough under my hands, and I climb the steps back onto the decking. Just as I’m taking a deep breath to prepare for re-entry, Lauren and Nicki’s voices float through the open kitchen window, carrying on the still air.
‘Thanks for taking him while I went to the loo,’ Lauren says. ‘Has he been OK?’
I hear the chuckle of a Woody being passed back to his mother.
‘He’s been a delight. You’re so lucky.’
‘Ha. Well, yes. He’s lovely sometimes. Are you enjoying your baby shower?’
Nicki pauses before replying. You can build that woman a vulva ( including a clitoris ) out of tissue paper, and she still won’t be fully satisfied. ‘Yeah,’ she says, before pausing. ‘It’s, Charlotte . . . you know. But bless her.’
I’m not sure why I’m staying here, lurking and listening. I dust off my legs to stand up and let myself in, when.
‘. . . at least Charlotte gives a shit,’ Nicki continues. ‘Unlike someone . . . Tell me Lauren, where the hell is ?’
I lower myself down at the mention of my name and put my back against the wall, my heart surging.
A babble from Woody. ‘Shh, shh. ?’ Lauren asks. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ve hardly seen her since she arrived. Is she ill or something? She’s spent most of the time in the toilet.’
I roll my eyes. Nicki acts like she hardy registers me but I know I’m always being carefully monitored.
‘. . . and when she’s not hiding in the toilet, she’s on her phone. Are we boring her or something?’
It’s so jarring to hear Nicki discuss me in this bitchy, straight-forward way. It’s so different from her usual fake politeness. This voice is natural and unguarded, revealing she’s spoken about me using this tone before. I await Lauren’s response, my heart racing.
‘She’s got this big work thing going on,’ Lauren replies diplomatically, and I let go of my tight breath as she defends me. ‘She feels terrible about the timing but it’s all blown up today.’
‘Blown up? Wow. Are things going badly with her agency or something?’
Does Nicki sound excited at the thought of my failure? I pull my knees up and keep listening – weirdly intrigued to hear more of this authentic Nicki, even if she’s being a dick about me.
‘The opposite. She’s got some really exciting emails about the book she’s launching Foxxy with.’
‘If it’s good news, surely it can wait til Monday?’ Nicki says. ‘I mean, God forbid she celebrates someone choosing to get pregnant and have a child. Did you see that article she posted a link to the other day?’
I wait for Lauren to defend me again. In fact, I’m almost looking forward to it. Instead, there’s a pause. ‘You saw it too?’ She gulps.
‘Fucking outrageous. Posting that when she knows I’m pregnant. It’s a dig, surely it is?’
My mouth drops open and I clutch my knees closer, waiting for Lauren to defend me again.
Instead, I get, ‘It did really upset me,’ Lauren admits. ‘When I read it, I basically went down a rage spiral.’
I almost gasp and give myself away. A red butterfly flutters past and lands on the hot decking for a moment, and I stare at it to try and steady myself.
‘It upset you too?’ There’s excitement in Nicki’s voice at this chink in friendship armour. ‘I was so pissed off. I tried to talk to Charlotte about it earlier but she was determined we all play happy families today.’
‘I just . . . don’t understand why she felt the need to post that,’ Lauren says – her voice reluctant but saying it anyway. ‘Like, OK, read it, secretly agree with it. But to share it online, as such a public endorsement of such a hateful, selfish, way of seeing mothers? Like . . . I dunno . . . shh, Woody. Yes, we’re going to sleep soon. I guess wants us to know how it feels to be on her side maybe?’
Nicki scoffs. ‘Nobody care s about her side, that’s the thing. It’s a made-up fucking problem from someone who has nothing better to do but make up problems. Nobody cares that you’ve chosen not to have kids, . Sorry to burst your bubble, but nobody is thinking about you that much.’
I wait for Lauren’s defence. I pray for Lauren’s defence. My entire sanity depends on her defence. ‘Exactly,’ she replies, and my stomach hurts instantly and I blink at the butterfly.
‘I’ve got bigger things to ponder on than, “Ooh, I wonder why Steff doesn’t want to have kids?” It’s like, fucking veganism, isn’t it?’ Nicki lets out a sharp laugh. ‘How can you tell if someone’s a vegan? You don’t have to, they’ll tell you themselves. It’s the same with all these child-free people. Getting all wound up because a few people ask them about having kids during small talk out of politeness. I mean, have you ever judged someone for not having kids? No. Me neither. It’s not a thing. We’re all too busy doing the important job of fucking making the next generation to be thinking about them, judging them . . .’
I mean, Nicki, that is exactly what you’re doing, you actual hypocrite. I hear her take breath to no-doubt launch into another well-rehearsed rant, but a piercing shriek cuts her off, and Woody starts howling so loudly I’m wincing with a wall between us.
‘Sorry. Shh, shh Woody,’ Lauren says. ‘It’s OK buddy. Sorry Nicki, he’s just overtired. He didn’t nap in the car. I had to pick up and she took ages coming out of the station and the parking woke him.’
‘But, you know, we ’ re the selfish ones.’
Lauren makes a non-committal grunt but the rest of their conversation is blunted by Woody. I can just about make out, ‘Sorry, he’ll calm down soon, I promise. I should maybe try and put him down, though I’m not allowed to for another four minutes.’
‘Don’t worry, he’s a baby. I . . .’ I lose them again behind Woody’s cries, until, ‘ . . . we should probably close the window, for the air-con.’
I duck as I hear someone clatter closer. A flash of Lauren’s hand pulling the glass wall shut and I hold my breath. Then it’s just me, in the heat, with the birds too hot to sing and everything I’ve just heard.
I can’t.
I rest my chin on my knees and the last five minutes seeps into my skin.
I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I ping from self-righteous rage to paranoia at how much Lauren misunderstood me, to crippling hurt at what I overhead. To think I’ve come here, on the most important weekend of my life, smiling, polite, with a hundred quid’s worth of gifts for Nicki in my bag, only for her to bitch, and goad, and ridicule me.
Fuck her.
Fuck her fuck her.
My phone almost explodes in my palm I’m squeezing it so hard. My breathing is ragged. My head full of a million comebacks and counter-arguments, defences and dramatic monologues.
I can’t be here.
I’m going to leave. I’m just going to take my stuff and go.
Shit. I can’t. I got a lift here.
With Lauren . . . Traitor.
Oh God, Lauren. Did she really think I agreed with THOSE parts of the article? Surely, she knows me better than that? I only posted it because of the dating part. Oh, how was I so dumb? No wonder she’s upset. Part of that article was weird as hell, but the bit about dating was so good.
My heart bursts with guilt, but then righteous anger replaces it. Doesn’t over a decade of friendship mean anything to her? Doesn’t she know me better than that?
I don’t know what to do. The drama of the day clasps its fingers around my neck – the opposing magnets of fate scrambling my brain. The publishing deals, but the being dumped. The thrill of my career cartwheeling into success, as a friendship cracks open like quaked earth. The butterfly’s flown away so I’ve got nothing to focus on and centre myself. I start counting planks of the deck instead. One, two, three, four. The wood’s been freshly varnished this summer. It gleams under the harsh light as my eyes skim and count . . . sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . .
. . . hang on, what’s that?
Stuck between two planks is a strange cylinder object, reflecting light off the alien metal. I lean over to take it in. It looks like an oversized can of coke. Weird. I twist it around and read the label.
What Will Baby Be? Gender reveal smoke cannon.
The top has been peeled back and the ring pull is standing up. Suddenly all the pink and blue food makes sense. There’s more to today than showering. Christ – can I be pushed any further over the edge? I roll my eyes and twist the cannon around to see it’s apparently filled with pink smoke.
Wow – today’s gone so beyond basic, it’s now fully complicated.
Transcript: Inspector Simmons interviewing Charlotte Roth
Charlotte: It was the perfect day. The perfect baby shower. Everything was perfect.
Simmons: Until somebody committed a terrible act of arson.
Charlotte: I still can’t imagine that’s what happened.
Simmons: Why not, Charlotte? Why is it so hard to imagine?
Charlotte: Because I used the best icebreaker games. Nobody could’ve felt alienated after those. Did you know, when meeting people in groups, you have to speak within the first ten minutes otherwise you disengage from the social situation? So, I ensured everyone at that baby shower had a chance to be noticed and listened to within the first ten minutes so the group would feel cohesive. Did you know, there was this research done at Harvard University, about the best way to ‘break ice’ in social groups, and it involved—
Simmons: —We’re going off track here. Can you go back to your movements on the day in question?
Charlotte: That’s what I’ve been doing. How am I supposed to know you don’t want the exact details of the icebreaker games? It might be relevant, you know? Maybe I accidentally missed someone out and they didn’t get a chance to speak within the first ten minutes, and they . . . started a fire in protest?