Nicki
Oh my God, my mother. Why? She’s so overstimulated she’s like a bottle of coke someone’s chucked a pack of refreshers into and then shaken up for extra measure.
‘Girls! Girls! Oh, it’s so marvellous to have you all here. Do you like this smell?’ She shoves the diffuser under Steffi’s nostrils. ‘Isn’t it lovely? Oh Lauren! He’s gorgeous. Hello, little guy. What’s his name again? Woody? Like the woodpecker?’
‘Mum!’
‘Is it Australian or something? Like your husband? So handsome, isn’t he? showed me pictures from the wedding. Are you girls hungry? Thirsty? Tea? Coffee? Pink lemonade? Juice? Herbal tea? Are you breastfeeding darling? God, I remember gagging for more than a coffee a day. I fed til she was eighteen months, didn’t I?’
‘I can’t say I remember,’ I reply.
‘Well I did. Eighteen months. Right. Drinks. Drinks. What can I get you all? Oh, everyone’s coming soon. Isn’t it exciting? Hasn’t Charlotte done an amazing job?’
She explodes around the kitchen like a pong ball, with Charlotte scuttling after her as she’s taking glasses off their display trays in her haste to get us the drinks we didn’t say yes to. My body ripples with irritation that’s laced with guilt, which is pretty much how I always feel around my mother. Annoyed, and then angry at myself for being annoyed. We’ve had moments of such closeness since I got pregnant. We’ve compared food cravings and levels of morning sickness. I’ve had so many questions for her about her pregnancy with me. Every answer feels like a precious pearl I want to clutch onto and remember. As I rub my kicking bump each morning, it dawns on me how I was carried in my mother’s stomach, just like this. I must’ve kicked her and woken her, and told her through weird placenta telepathy, that it was imperative to eat raw strawberry jelly for two weeks straight. My fingerprints are relics from everything she did for the nine months we shared a body. I’ve never felt closer to her. But, as she insists on taking Woody, without even letting Lauren object (‘ No. Sit down. Drink up. I ’ ve got him. Enjoy a cup of tea for five minutes just for yourself’) I find her just as annoying as always. Why can’t she just relax with us? Why does she act like every chair is a bed of nails?
Charlotte downs her glass of water and scutters about, doing her ‘final touches’. Steffi has gone to the toilet again. ‘Shouldn’t have had that giant iced coffee on the train.’ That’s three times she’s been since she got here. She’s either sick, or something else is going on and she’s trying to hide it from me. Honestly, why do I bother with her when she insists on being so secretive? She’s probably sending bitchy messages to her other cool London ‘child-free friends’ who liked that horrible opinion article she posted. She’ll have plenty of ammo, with all of Charlotte’s sugar sweet decorations. I wish I could stand up on a chair, at some point today, and say, ‘ None of this was my choice or taste, please everyone realise that, ’ without upsetting Charlotte. I’m already worried today’s hugely triggering for her and want to hide my bulging stomach with my hands in case it’s upsetting her. When I found out I was pregnant, I even turned into Charlotte when figuring out how to tell her. I googled ‘ how to tell a friend who has fertility issues you ’ re pregnant ’. The general consensus was to do it a) privately, b) via message, not by phone or in person so they have time to privately digest their own pain before replying, and c) to do all of this, obviously, before you post the ‘ We ’ re pregnant ’ announcement online. I didn’t need to worry about C, as I’d rather die than post a black and white scan of my uterus on socials. But I followed the other advice, worried sick it would affect her, especially as it was only a few months after Lauren got pregnant. And yet, after all that, Charlotte replied within two minutes with seven lines of heart eyes and fireworks emojis. I check the clock. Almost start time. I stand in front of the air-con for a moment, watching Lauren lean against the counter and sip her tea as Mum starts a manic game of Peek-A-Boo with Woody on the kitchen floor. Maybe I can squeeze in a micro-nap before everyone arrives? I lower myself onto the sofa and I close my eyes, hearing Lauren and Mum’s voices drift over my head.
‘So, how are you finding it all?’ Mum asks. ‘Motherhood?’ followed by, ‘Where’s Woody? Where is he? Oh, there he is! Peekaboo!’
‘It’s . . . it’s a lot sometimes. Isn’t it?’ Lauren replies. ‘Oh, he loves you, Jane.’
‘Peek. A. Boo! Where’s Woody? . . . Oh, my love. Welcome to the best kept secret in the world . . . just how hard parenting is . . . Peek a boo.’ There’s a delighted belly chuckle from Woody.
‘It is quite hard, isn’t it?’
‘The thing is, everyone tries to tell you beforehand, but nobody listens because nobody listens to mothers, do they? Then, when it happens to you, you’re all like ‘ why did nobody tell me how hard it is? ’ Then you realise, you were told, over and over, but you weren’t listening. You were too busy tutting at some poor woman who’s struggling to get her buggy off the bus. Woody? Where’s he gone? Oh! There he is!’
There’s a quiet gulp of Lauren drinking her tea. I’ve not heard Mum talk like this. Not even heard this tone of voice from her before. Lauren’s never told me it’s hard apart from the odd funny message, but I’ve hardly seen her properly since Woody was born, to be fair.
‘I don’t want to become one of those women who vanishes when they become a mother,’ I remember her telling me when she was pregnant. And yet, Lauren has turned down every invite since Woody came along. ‘ Sorry I ’ m too exhausted. Sorry he won ’ t sleep. Sorry he won ’ t wean. Sorry I don ’ t have enough time to get into and out of town within his wake window. ’
I keep my eyes closed but this nap won’t come. I’m worried. Will this happen to me too? I’ve already got quite a boring, traditional life . . . will this make it worse? Motherhood can’t be that hard, can it? I honestly don’t think having a baby can be as hard as pregnancy. At least when the baby is here, I’ll get my body back. I’ll get more sleep once I’m not hunched around an animated fleshy beachball that kicks me in the ribs all night. When the baby is here, I won’t have gurgling heartburn anymore. I’ll be able to have a hot bath, drink more than one coffee, do a shot of tequila, not worry they’re stillborn every time they don’t kick for an hour. I won’t be like Lauren, I forbid it. And I’m sure Lauren’s doing better than she looks anyway. I mean, Woody seems gorgeous.
I close my eyes and tune out my mother’s voice, allowing my body to rest before everyone comes.
Before Phoebe comes.
Phoebe.
As I doze off, her face comes into focus. Cat-eyes, a smile that’s almost a smirk, a nose that looks hand-painted with freckles.
Meeting Phoebe was like when I tried salted caramel for the first time, activating taste buds I didn’t know existed.
‘Come on. Do a shot,’ her voice says in my head, dragging the past back. The two of us were in a speakeasy in Shoreditch, perched on stools at the packed bar. Everyone around me looked like they’d only completed puberty the week before.
‘It’s Tuesday,’ I’d protested.
‘I’m aware it’s Tuesday. And so?’ She winked as she slurped up the last of her cocktail through an unnecessarily thin straw, whereas I still had half my drink left.
‘So . . . it’s a work night and I’m not a student anymore. Hangovers morphed from amusingly uncomfortable to downright I-question-everything-in-my-life overnight when I turned 25.’ I pushed my drink away. ‘Not that anyone in here knows the meaning of the words twenty - five . Do they all have a young person’s railcard? I bet they fucking do.’ Phoebe cackled and pushed my drink back. ‘Plus,’ I sighed, knowing it was useless. ‘I don’t want to be sweating tequila during our pitch to Femme tomorrow morning.’
Phoebe just gestured to the bartender and a tray of shots arrived. Not just two shots. A whole tray. Where had everyone else gone? How had we got here from the old man’s pub around the corner of the office? I didn’t remember the journey. What was the time? I blearily checked my phone and groaned. How was it half eleven? Two missed calls from Matt.
Matt:
Umm, where are you wifey? You said you were leaving work drinks two hours ago?
‘Phoebe, it’s half eleven.’ I tried reasoning with her. I’d explained it was Tuesday. I’d reminded her it was almost midnight. Surely that was all she needed to know.
But she plucked a shot off the tray and handed it over with such authority that I took it. ‘I’m aware of the time, .’
‘It’s a Tuesday.’
‘We’ve already established that too.’ She clinked her shot glasses and threw the aniseed liquid down her delicate throat. The muscle memory of peer pressure kicked in and I found myself copying and wincing. I coughed as she laughed and offered me a sip of her water.
‘Where did everyone go?’ I asked, wiping my mouth.
‘Home. Losers. Not us. Come on. Down the hatch.’
‘Phoebe, I can’t.’
Yet down the hatch it went. And there was laughter, and more gossip, and telling Matt, sorry I ’ m leaving now , and then, whoops, how is it half midnight already, shit I’ve missed the last tube. Then there was oh wells, we may as well go dancing. Phoebe was, of course, one of those people who knew a great place , not very far away, which had great music and friendly people and killer cocktails, not that I could taste anything by that point anyway. We danced, the music thudding through my white work plimsols, paired with a midi skirt and pressed white silk blouse. Compared to what everyone else was wearing in that club, I may’ve well been wearing a toe-length petticoat and a fucking . . . ruff. I wondered if we’d bump into Steffi. This was her sort of place, her sort of life. I’d always thought it was mildly pathetic but it was undeniably enjoyable. My face hurt from laughing. My body ached from dancing. Matt’s message on my phone, saying he was going to sleep now, have a good night, are you sure you’re OK to stay at this Phoebe’s house? Yes, yes, sorry for keeping you up.
I’d only known Phoebe for a month. I was marketing manager for this ethical gemstones company and she’d joined as ‘young blood’ to help get our brand to appeal to Generation WhateverTheHellTheyAre . The ones on TikTok who only eat viral salads while diagnosing themselves with ADHD. I’d initially been intimidated by her, as you only can be when you used to be the young cool one in the office, but now, somehow, you look at the generation below with judgemental bafflement and panic your career’s over. Phoebe and I were paired to ‘learn from each other’, and, despite my fear she’d make me feel ancient, we’d really clicked. I was amazed to learn she was 29, not 24. ‘I have three younger sisters from when my dad remarried,’ she confided in me when I marvelled at her ability to understand Gen Z. ‘Once they grow up, my career is ruined. But I’m happy to milk them until then.’
‘Do they want to post an Instagram of themselves wearing our new Rose Quartz charm bracelet on their grid?’
She laughed so hard her freckles scrunched together to form one giant freckle. ‘They’re not even on there, . Oh bless you.’
I’d taken her out to lunch on the first day, to show her the nearby street food market and explain which stalls were the best. We’d sat with salads perched on our laps, cross-legged on a tiny stretch of grass, knees scrunched up to make room for the other London office workers. She apparently had no first-day nerves, or first-day levels of appropriateness. By the end of lunch, she’d already mentioned taking weed gummies, how much money she had currently in her bank account (‘less than two hundred pounds and you guys are paying me in arrears, fuck’) and given me entry-level information on the sexual politics involved in being a femme lesbian . . . a term I’d had to google afterwards. By the end of her first week, we’d had lunch every day and our company had launched its own TikTok channel. A month later, I was staggering from the night bus back into her house share in Dalston, my white trainers now grey, laughing as she shhed me in case I woke her housemates.
‘Be quiet. I don’t want to piss them off, it’s a Tuesday.’
‘OH, ONLY NOW YOU ADMIT GOING OUT ON TUESDAY IS FAR FROM THE NORM.’
‘Shh! ! Hey. You don’t need to drink direct from the tap like that. I’ll get you a glass. Hang on.’
It was like walking through a portal to my youth, wandering around her house, borrowing her pyjamas, brushing my teeth with my finger in her filthy shared bathroom. I ached with nostalgia for how much this house, this night, reminded me of my Little Women days at university. The four toothbrushes in a cup on the side of the basin, the novelty posters lining the staircase, an assigned shelf in the fridge and freezer, and a pot on the kitchen counter for milk and loo roll money. Phoebe and I passed out, head to toe, on a rickety rental bed, on a Tuesday night, with not a care for what that meant for the reality of Wednesday morning.
‘I’m not like this,’ I told Phoebe as we tried to get some sleep in the rising dawn. My life felt very far away down this portal. My husband, my sensible two-bed flat in a sensibly priced area of the city, the pitch I had to deliver at work in seven hours’ time, the practicalities of what the hell I was going to wear tomorrow. Instead, I just had aching feet from dancing, aching face from laughing, aching heart from how much life I might’ve been missing out on.
‘Not like what?’ Phoebe’s voice was heavy with almost-sleep.
‘A clubbing-on-Tuesday person.’
‘You talk like you’re so old,’ she said. I could feel her smile, even though her head was by my feet. ‘But you’re not. It’s funny.’
‘I am old.’
‘You’re only two years older than me.’
‘Yeah but you’re youthful. I’m . . . I’ve only ever seen two penises in my whole life. Two.’
She giggled and my toes shook on her pillow. ‘That’s two more than me.’
‘So you never?’
‘I always knew I was gay,’ she replied. ‘Didn’t see the point of experimenting with something as aesthetically displeasing as a cock, just to check.’
‘They are very strange, aren’t they? Like little cartoon characters.’
‘I’ll have to take your word for it.’
‘Still though. You must’ve slept with more than two people.’
‘This month? Yeah. But that doesn’t make me young. Youthfulness is a feeling. A lightness. An openness. An optimism.’
Was I not those things? I asked myself, as heavy weights tugged my eyelids shut. I had every reason to be grateful, to be optimistic . I knew that. I’d sat there smugly coupled up with Matt throughout my twenties as the Little Women had cried on my sofa about their dating woes, the stakes getting higher as the years passed. Why won ’ t he call me his girlfriend? Why won ’ t he say I love you? Why has he decided to go travelling? Why won ’ t he move in with me? Why won ’ t he marry me? Why won ’ t he have children with me? The hunt, and the chase, and the insecurities, and the is this ever going to happen , and what ’ s wrong with me , or is it what’s wrong with men , and am I going to die alone . . . and there I have sat, passing tissues to Lauren and saying ‘ you don ’ t deserve this ’ , going to see a psychic with Charlotte, taking hot photos of Steffi for her dating profiles . . . smugly, smugly with lovely Matt. Matt who has loved me, unwaveringly, since he was 20 years old. I’ve never been dumped. I’ve never been ghosted. Never had to deal with commitment-phobia or covert narcissism or feminist fuck bois. I should feel light, and open, and youthful. And yet, as my eyes fluttered shut on an unfamiliar pillow, with an unfamiliar body in bed with me, even if it was just a colleague who’d let me crash . . . I felt stale, closed, cynical.
Old.
The more time I spent with Phoebe, the more I started viewing my twenties with a different prescription. The chats over our desks, our lunches in the park, the afterwork drinks that started regularly turning into shots and dancing and crashing at hers . . . the more I felt I’d missed something rather than dodged something.
‘Doesn’t it depress you, knowing you’ll never fall in love again?’ Phoebe asked, half a burrito hanging out of her mouth as we sat on a park bench. ‘Never have a first kiss again?’
And, ‘I can’t believe you’ve never been dumped!’ she’d exclaimed, thudding her empty shot glass down on the bar. ‘How do you know your heart if it’s never been broken? It’s capable of such pain, . Such glorious, exquisite, pain. You need to know who you are when you’re heartbroken. You learn so much about yourself.’
‘Well, er, Matt and I did take a break for a week after graduating to see if we missed each other,’ I offered blearily. ‘But we both missed each other after two days, so we got back together.’
She’d blown a raspberry with her delicate mouth. ‘Doesn’t count. If you’re not hyperventilating on the ground, clutching your heart through your top to try and stop the sheer physical, actual, agony of it breaking . . . nope.’
‘I was quite gloomy for those two days.’
‘Christ. You’ve never had a break-up song, have you?’ Phoebe would’ve looked less shocked if I’d said I hadn’t had the MMR vaccine.
‘A what?’
‘A song that you play repeatedly when you’re heartbroken that’s then forever tainted and triggering.’
‘Umm, I get sad when I listen to that one about Eric Clapton singing to his dead son.’
‘So, you’re not a psychopath, congratulations.’
I tried leaning my chin in my hand but missed and almost fell off my stool. ‘Aren’t I just lucky?’ I argued. ‘To have met The One, dodged all that?’
‘But how do you know he’s The One if you haven’t had a chance to see what you’re like when you’re with other people? What they bring out of you?’ She had that glint in her eye again, pushing another shot glass my direction. Tuesdays are the new Fridays, was our motto. I hadn’t shared a bed with Matt on a Tuesday for weeks now.
‘Matt brings out general happiness.’
‘Are you sure you’re not confusing happiness with just comfort? Safety?’
‘What’s wrong with being safe?’
She raised both eyebrows at me and downed her shot.
‘You tell me.’
It’s hard to know if Phoebe was the blight that had started to spread through Matt and I’s marriage, or if she’d just merely pointed it out. But, by the end of that summer, I was no longer happy. I was definitely no longer comfortable.
‘Don’t you mind, me going out so much?’ I’d asked Matt. When, yet again, I’d come home on a Wednesday night, with red eyes and hardly any sleep.
He’d shrugged and carried on playing Football Manager on his iPad. ‘I quite enjoy having the big telly to myself to be honest,’ he’d replied. ‘And I get Chinese, which you don’t like.’
One night, when we’d gone for a drink around the corner at our local, like we always did, I asked him if he ever thought about doing role-play.
He’d pulled a face into his pint. ‘Not really, no. You?’
‘No. Do you think we should want to do role-play?’
‘What would we even play?’
God it was so sad. The only sexy roles I could imagine was us not knowing one another for the past twelve years.
My ‘lucky’ life started to feel like a choker. I, quite quickly, began to feel resentful I’d met Matt so young. Resentful that he was so loveable, and dependable, and into me, and never made me doubt or question anything. The only drama we had was the Steffi stuff, and to be honest, sometimes, when I wanted to fancy him enough to have sex with him, I’d have to remember the Steffi drama to get turned on.
Had I settled, marrying the guy I met at uni? Had I missed out on the best sex of my life? The worst sex of my life, but funny enough it would make a hilarious story? Steffi always had the funniest stories – us snorting into cocktails while she’d wail, ‘Stop it, it’s my life,’ but laughing too. I never had any stories to tell. Would I have been happier with another person? Had I met Matt later, would I appreciate him more because I’d been dicked around (literally) through my twenties? Or was I taking him for granted?
‘You’re making me question everything,’ I complained to Phoebe, over drinks, celebrating the client pitch we’d somehow pulled off despite this morning’s hangover. So much was possible since I’d met her. You can be hungover at work and still deliver. You could make new friends in your thirties. It’s not too late to change. To question what you’ve been doing up until now and ask yourself if it’s for the best.
‘That’s not true,’ she replied. ‘You were questioning it all anyway. I’ve just made you admit it to yourself.’
I’d sighed heavily and looked at the large glass of red wine in front of me. Already it didn’t seem large enough and I’d not had a sip yet.
‘For a lesbian, you’ve got an extraordinary amount of patience for me droning on about my husband,’ I said, aware this was a conversation she’d endured many times over.
‘Hey,’ she held up her glass to cheers me. ‘Maybe I’ve got a vested interest.’ Her freckles scrunched together again as she smiled, and I found myself smiling back . . .
. . . The doorbell.
A flustered Charlotte squealing, ‘They’re here. People are arriving.’
My mum’s hands on my shoulder. ‘Wake up, honey. Your guests are arriving. You dropped off.’
The baby stirs inside me. My life falls back into focus. It’s my baby shower. The baby I’m having with Matt. It’s today. It’s 35 degrees outside. All my friends are coming. I’m in my parents’ new greenhouse home. It’s two years later. Everything has happened the way it should.
Woody’s crying on the wooden floor. Apparently the doorbell has upset him. Lauren bends over to pick him up. Steffi is ensconced on her phone in a squashy chair in the corner, trying to get away with as much scrolling as possible while I napped.
Charlotte’s greeting people at the door like this is her house. Multiple voices saying hello, gasps at the balloon arch. I feel the hot air drift in from the open door. My ears prickle as they listen out to who is saying hi and asking where to put their gifts.
There’s only one voice I want to hear.
Transcript: Inspector Simmons interviewing Lauren Powell
Simmons: Notes from your GP say you’ve recently been suffering from symptoms of Post-Natal Depression?
Lauren: Have you ever googled the symptoms for Post-Natal Depression?
Simmons: Er—
Lauren: —Because if you then google the symptoms of severe sleep deprivation, they’re basically the same thing.
Simmons: Are you saying you’re not ill?
Lauren: No. Yes. I don’t know. I guess, what I’m saying is, I’m too sleepy for arson. I don’t have the energy to wash my hair more than once a week – let alone start a fire.
Simmons: But you’ve been struggling, haven’t you? With having a baby? The GP said you were requesting counselling.
Lauren: How is that even relevant?
Simmons: The baby shower might’ve been quite hard for you . . . all these images of motherhood, when you’ve been finding motherhood so tough.
Lauren: I was happy for my friend.