23
‘ I t is absolutely and definitely not a date,’ says Janey, peeling a tangerine at lunchtime, rather than opening a Tunnocks teacake, which is their habit on a Thursday.
They come in boxes of six, but that works out well, as Milton and Lish like the crunchy bottom biscuit and Janey and Lish like the marshmallow top bit, so they get a whole one each, then a half.
All three of her friends look pointedly at her tangerine.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ says Lish eventually. ‘Have sex with him.’
‘Without even dinner?’
‘You used to have sex with Colin after you’d made him dinner. And washed his grundies.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ says Janey. ‘But if it helps, I don’t think either of us enjoyed it very much.’
‘I hope you have a nice date,’ says Milton, trying to change the subject.
‘Stop it!’ says Janey. ‘I am moving seven dogs in an estate car.’
‘That wouldn’t even be the worst date,’ says Amsan.
The others turn to look at her. ‘Surely not.’
‘Surely yes. Someone matched with Yasmin on a dating site and says they had a tip slot booked and would she come with them and by the way did she have a car.’
‘Ooooh!’
‘That is bad,’ says Milton, shaking his head sadly at the state of the world.
‘I can never do them,’ says Janey. ‘I just can’t.’
‘You can’t because you’re too busy having sex with a very hairy man who only owns one pair of trousers,’ says Lish. ‘You have to do it for me. Johnson is on a ban for six weeks.’
‘So he should be!’ says Janey in horror. ‘Seriously, you want to do it with him when he’s ill?’
‘I do,’ says Lish, stoutly. ‘He’s lying right there .’
The others regard her with a certain amount of respect, which she ignores. ‘What are you wearing? Don’t say black.’
Janey is in her smart black trouser suit, which is kind of just about smart, but also, trousers. ‘Just this?’
‘Well, that’s stupid.’
‘Why?’
‘Seven dogs – you’ll be covered in hair. You’ll look like a burst cushion!’
‘Oh my God,’ says Janey. ‘Stop it.’
‘We’ll stop it,’ says Lish, ‘when you agree to go home and change. We know you have time.’
Janey smiles apologetically. She must offer Lish some more time sitting with Johnson. He’s a mean Scrabble player.
‘Just do your last appointment by phone and say you’re checking to see if they can hear down the phone,’ offers Amsan. ‘Nobody will notice.’
‘You’re all terrible,’ says Janey, used to being ribbed about her supposedly easy job. ‘Anyway, look at all the gifts you get, Lish.’
It was true. Lish gets showered in thank-you presents and chocolates by grateful mothers, even if she sometimes darkly observes that they are really grateful to whoever it was had just got them their epidural but they couldn’t remember her name.
‘I’ve got to stop that,’ says Lish. ‘Johnson is too heavy. That’s what got us here.’
‘That’s just Johnson shape,’ says Janey. ‘Doesn’t he walk it all off anyway?
‘No,’ says Lish. ‘It’s bad. Since they replaced his bike with an electric one, for all the hills.’
‘No,’ says Amsan, pretending to beat her head on the desk. ‘What were they thinking?’
Milton just shakes his head slowly. As a porter, he covers about fifteen thousand steps a day, pushing a heavy trolley.
‘They were thinking, let’s make all our posties get sick,’ says Lish, shaking her head. ‘He’s going to need new shorts when he goes back to work.’
Nobody asks if this is an ‘if’.
‘Well, he can practise round your house,’ says Janey carefully.
‘Not really,’ says Lish. They live out in the sticks, a beautiful house in the middle of nowhere, but it’s right on the road with no pavement; you have to drive to get anywhere. ‘He’s missing the fruitcake the most.’
‘One whole fruitcake?’ says Amsan.
‘Some people like fruitcake.’
‘Don’t ask whether she still puts a pound in it.’
‘You . . . bake him a fruitcake and put a pound in it?’ says Amsan.
‘No,’ says Lish. ‘I bake everyone a fruitcake. Then it’s just a race against time.’
Everyone digests this around the table.
‘It didn’t matter when he was cycling twenty miles a day.’
‘Well, anyway, got to go,’ says Janey, and Milton’s bleep goes off.
‘Call it a date!’ says Lish, desperately, as she goes. ‘Shower! Lipstick! Hair! Breath spray!’
‘ Breath spray?’
‘Preventative, you idiot.’
‘Yasmin met someone for a date off of the internet whose tooth was brown and he asked her to pull it out for him as he couldn’t get an NHS dentist and was too scared to do it himself,’ starts Amsan, as Janey heads off, groaning.
*
She changes into her nice jeans with the turn-ups and a red stripy top with a boat neck.
Then she looks at her neck more closely and puts on a white shirt and a tank top Essie bought her for Christmas instead.
It is from Brora, an incredibly posh Edinburgh brand, that Janey would never consider, and also she has never worn a tank top in her life and doesn’t get the point of them.
It is navy with a thin burgundy trim and actually as Janey slips it on over the shirt she slightly sees the point of it.
It is neat and slick and keeps her shirt tucked in, and the colour brings out her eyes.
Huh. She had been so willing to write it off as Essie buying her stupid and impractical things just to show off how much money she has, and making some point to her mother that she never goes anywhere remotely fancy enough that she could justify spending this much money on a jumper that doesn’t even have any sleeves.
But in fact it is flattering and pretty and she feels nice wearing it.
She adds some lipstick in a colour that matches the trim, pulls on a nice pair of trainers, and figures that, okay, she’s a little dressed up, but she’s not wearing a ballgown.
It occurs to her that the nicest and most expensive item of clothing she owns is now almost certain to get peed on by six puppies and she should probably keep it for best. Then she reminds herself that keeping things for best is a total waste of life and energy, and heads downstairs.
Essie frowns. She was having a slight reverie about Dwight’s bum in his tight jeans, which is crazy because she thinks tight jeans are ridiculous.
Connor dresses as though he’s in a Hugh Grant romantic comedy, which she absolutely thinks is the correct way for men to dress, not like Woody from Toy Story .
But they cupped him so very well and . . .
She tells herself this is just because she hasn’t seen Connor for so long.
And their hayloft days were behind them quite quickly.
It was very sexy and romantic at the time, but she was finding hay in very odd places for quite a long time after that, and bed is more comfortable after all.
It’s become . . . very sweet, and quite conventional.
Which is absolutely fine of course, she’s not complaining .
. . she just can’t believe how very fixated she got on that drop of sweat rolling off Dwight’s tight chest.
Which is why she has now found herself sitting here ordering grouting for him, and checking everything off on the spreadsheets.
Which she said she would never do; she never meant to get so involved.
But there’s so much to do. She has to give Wee Jim a timeline, otherwise he’s going to keep sanding the same bit of banister for eternity.
The beautiful finished homes she loves to look at never mention all this stuff.
They’re all terribly vague about moving out to other places, or employing project managers . . .
She looks up. Oh, God. Is that what she is?
Her mum comes down the stairs, smelling perfumey.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I’m going to move the puppies – fancy it?’
‘No, I’m going to call Connor,’ Essie says, loudly, as if Connor can hear her and she is just proving she isn’t thinking about anyone else.
Which she isn’t, as, one, that would be stupid, and two, she has heard Wee Jim discussing Dwight’s success with women when they didn’t realise she was upstairs, and Dwight had said, I do explain to these little ladies that I just can’t be tied down , and Essie had snorted so loudly he’d heard her and said, What was that for?
and she’d said, Oh nothing, little laddie , and he hadn’t liked that at all.
She shakes her head and turns to look at her mother. ‘Is that the tank top I got you? It’s from . . . ’
‘I know. I love it.’
‘You’re wearing it to move puppies ?’
‘ I thought it would be nice . . . ’
‘Yeah, whatever.’
Janey bites her lip. ‘And I thought it might be nice to . . . spend an evening with a guy...’
Essie’s face is the worst; she looks . . . not disgusted, or interested. She looks completely and utterly bamboozled, as if her mum could not possibly have an opinion on the opposite sex in any way at all.
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ says Janey, upset and flustered, and heads out the back door.
‘I thought I was meant to be the moody one,’ Essie says to the empty kitchen as she goes.