Chapter 23
23
She was close. So close. She could feel it building. A few more hours of peace and quiet was all it was going to take. Drew had sent through his final chapter – from his personal email – that morning. Of course, finishing the editing was only part of it, as she had discovered from the millions of weblinks that Drew had sent through to her. Once she’d got it edited, she’d need to format it properly, then get all the page inserts completed. There were margin sizes to consider – correct indents too. Then they’d need a dedication. Who did you dedicate a book like this to? she wondered. To Mum and Dad, for all your support , didn’t feel quite right. Then there was the cover. She’d searched online and managed to find a couple of places that did them pretty cheap, and it wasn’t like they were doing it to properly make money. It just needed to be good enough to keep Drew happy, that was all.
What she really wanted was to get the whole thing fully edited before the Christmas party on Friday. That left her three days. Provided Drew sorted out the children, and there weren’t any major mishaps, it didn’t seem impossible. After that, she would get her life back. Whatever that meant. Time to concentrate on things like George’s Christmas play costume, for which she was rapidly running out of time, or preparing herself for the nipple-splitting agony that was breastfeeding and the rest of the all-consuming work that came with a newborn baby. An unexpected twinge of sadness struck just around her collarbone. She was sure she’d find a bit of time in there for writing too.
‘Three more days,’ she said and opened up the laptop, not sure if what she’d just said was a happy statement or not.
‘Not long to go now, right?’ Heidi said as she stood next to Drew by the sink in the office. ‘A Christmas release?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Well, make sure you send the link through when it’s done.’
‘I will,’ Drew said, not sure if he was flattered or terrified by the proposal of his long-term work colleague reading his lurid prose. And Heidi wasn’t the only one.
It took less than a week before news of his dalliance into the literary world spread around the office.
‘I just thought people should know you were doing it for a reason,’ Barry had said when attempting to explain why he had told the entire team about Drew’s enterprise. ‘People were gossiping, you know. Saying things.’
‘And now they’re not?’ Drew asked sceptically.
‘Well,’ Barry tilted his head. ‘Most people who mention it seemed to be pretty impressed.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
It had taken a few days for him to believe it, but sure enough, the comments he received were, for the most part, complimentary.
‘Good for you,’ Andy said when it cropped up out of nowhere, in a conversation they were having about forklift trucks and the need to hire a couple of extra drivers. ‘Wish I could get the missus to do something like that. You might end up like that Ernest Jones.’
‘You mean E. L. James?’ Even before his dalliance into the world of novel writing, Drew was fairly sure he wouldn’t have mixed up the most well-known name in erotic fiction with a high street jewellery store.
‘Aye, that’s the one. She’s raking it in.’
‘It’s a very competitive market now.’ Drew tried to sound modest and keep his enthusiasm in check.
‘Well, we’re all rooting for you here,’ Andy had replied. And it had been encouraging. Very encouraging. Everything Drew had read online said that having a solid fan base to launch your books to was one of the most important factors for being successful. It was a shame he couldn’t send out an office memo. Maybe he could put it on the staff intranet instead, although he’d have to check with someone first.
‘You need to go home,’ Polly said, as she passed his office that Friday afternoon. Friday the thirteenth, although most of the day had gone fairly well. ‘You know we’ve been given permission to clock off an hour early so we can get back for the party.’
‘I know,’ Drew replied. ‘Just got to fill in a couple more of these spreadsheets, and I’ll be off.’
‘Well, don’t be late,’ Polly said, swinging around and heading back towards the elevator. ‘And I can’t wait to talk to Sarah. I have a feeling she and I are going to have a lot in common. She is coming, isn’t she?’
‘She is,’ Drew said.
‘Great. Well, I’m sure people will be queuing up to talk to her.’
Only when she had disappeared into the elevator did the weight of Polly’s words register in Drew’s mind.
‘Oh no,’ he said.
It wasn’t that he was embarrassed. He wasn’t embarrassed about any of it. He was proud. Proud of himself and Sarah for what they had accomplished. Proud in some strange way of all his colleagues for the support they had suddenly mustered for his new enterprise. He wasn’t embarrassed at all. He was just stuck.
When he and Sarah had first started on their little venture, she had made him promise not to tell anybody about it.
‘Why would it matter?’ he had said. ‘We’re grown adults.’
‘Because it matters to me,’ Sarah had replied. ‘I don’t want it somehow getting back to the school or the other mums that I’m doing this.’
‘Why not? And how would it even get back to them?’
‘It would. These things have a way of doing that. Please. If you want me to help you with this, then can you please keep it to yourself? I’ve got enough stress at the minute without adding that to it. Please, just don’t.’ And so, he had agreed, mainly because he knew how terrified Sarah was about baby number three coming along, and he didn’t want to do anything to rock the boat. Then, as the weeks passed, and the book featured more and more in their conversations, discussions over the baby featured less and less. Given that it was the calmest he had seen her since finding out she was pregnant, it felt silly to disrupt any of that. Unfortunately, he was now in a bind. Technically, he had stuck to their agreement not to tell anyone. After all, she was the one who had sent the email. Had she not, Drew wouldn’t have had the situation with Barry, and his whole office wouldn’t be waiting to download Air Hostess Hits Halkidiki the day it was released.
‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Drew spoke to himself in a similar manner all the way home. He would have to feign illness. That was the best thing he could do. Only, the hotel he’d booked had a forty-eight-hour cancellation policy, and they’d already missed that window. Ill or not, Sarah would still make him go, just so they didn’t waste the money. Perhaps Sarah would be ill. She had been saying how tired she was all week, and she had been putting every spare hour into trying to get the book finished. Maybe the thought of his Christmas party would be too much. He could hope.
Fifteen minutes into the journey back and his phone pinged with a message.
Just borrowed a dress from Nelly. Excited.
Followed by various emojis, including a dress and a disco ball.
‘Ah, crap.’ He pushed his thumbs into his temples and considered the situation. They had the room. They had paid for the room. That was it. The thought struck him like a small bolt of static. He would persuade Sarah that their time would be better spent upstairs in the hotel room – relaxing and chilling – rather than mingling with people they didn’t even have telephone numbers for. Comfy mattress, fresh sheets. He could sell it to her. Hotel bathrobes, room service. He shook the idea from his head. There was no way Sarah would fork out for room service when there was a perfectly good and entirely free buffet already waiting for them downstairs. He would have to bring her up a doggy bag. Or several, with the way her appetite was. Still, it was workable. The first option, of Sarah not wanting to go, still remained his most preferred in the situation, but still, he had a back-up plan. He was going to get through this.
Sarah had successfully managed to shave her armpits and approximately 33 per cent of her legs. Ideally, she would have been able to give her bikini line a bit of a go too, but given that she wasn’t even sure where it was at the moment, she would more likely end up nicking a region of her anatomy that she really didn’t want to have nicked.
The dress from Nelly had been a godsend. Given that she was now less than five weeks away from her due date and exactly zero items in her wardrobe fitted, she had taken to wearing the same black skirt every single day. Top wise, she was also in the dregs of her outfits, which included two stretchy breastfeeding tops. One of them, which was once grey, was now looking decidedly brown, excluding the distinctly yellow circles that fanned out from beneath her armpits. Not exactly Christmas party get up.
Despite it all, Sarah was feeling fairly good about things. The varicose veins that bulged over her calves and around the backs of her knees, the constipation that left her unsure as to whether the gain in bump size was due to baby or bloating, and the acid reflux that left her throat feeling like she had spent a day downing battery acid were all less than ideal, but they weren’t the be-all and end-all. Even the sporadic back spasms she had been feeling all morning were just another niggle. Her children were healthy and happy. Her husband was healthy and happy, and for the most part, so was she. Even in a tiny house. As a bonus, the added obsession of completing the book combined with her new antenatal class meant she had had less time to fixate on the upcoming trial of labour.
Mind Birthing had become as enjoyable as staring at other women’s vaginas could be. The classes had flown by. It had helped a little with the nerves, she considered, during her final session. If nothing else, the naps had ensured she got just a little more rest.
‘Breathe in through your nose…’ The instructor closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. ‘Now breathe out and let the air flow down through your body and out through your vagina, feeling your cervix open with the flow.’ She repeated her sentiments again and again. ‘In through your nose, and out through your vagina. Let the walls of your cervix expand and grow as the air passes between it.’
‘Breathe in?—’
On the third breath, a small squeak came from the back of the room.
‘Yes, Cherie?’ The instructor spoke with languorous syllables that filled the room around her like smoke from an incense stick. ‘Is everything okay?’
Like everyone else in the room, Sarah’s eyes shifted towards the girl at the back. Petite and dark-haired, she had on her face a look of utter bemusement.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just want to check. You don’t mean actually breathe out through our vaginas, do you? Only, I didn’t know you were able to do that?’
‘I think she means in a more metaphorical sense,’ Sarah answered the question for her.
‘Oh.’
After a question like that, Sarah found it impossible to take anything else seriously, and her nerves about the birth were momentarily diminished.
‘Sarah? It is Sarah, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ Sarah replied. It took a moment to place the woman, who looked distinctly different now that she was out of her strict post office uniform.
‘I just wanted to say sorry about the other week. You know. With the package.’
‘I remember,’ Sarah said. Three weeks might be enough time to forget some things, but not being forced to unpack a sex toy in a crowded post office.
‘Well, I wanted to say I was sorry, that’s all. It is just that it is company policy, you see. Anyway, I’ve wanted to apologise for a while, only, well I was a bit embarrassed, see. But this is the last session, and I didn’t want you to think?—’
‘I understand,’ Sarah said. ‘Really, don’t worry about it. It’s all forgotten now.’ It was. Five minutes into her and Drew using the Clitomaster, and she had decided she would take the post office scene a hundred times over if it meant not having to give that thing back. Puffs of air – who knew?
A relieved smile washed across the woman’s face, although it was quickly replaced by another expression. ‘Can I ask you something?’ She leaned in as she spoke and lowered her voice to just above a whisper.
‘Okay?’
‘The Clitomaster. Would you recommend it?’ she said.
In moments like this, it was almost impossible for Sarah not to think about the effect Drew’s little venture had had on them. Had a woman in a birthing class asked her about the use of sex toys only three months prior, she would probably have run off and locked herself in the nearest toilet and wept in humiliation. Instead, she lifted her head and said to the woman, ‘God, yes. Get one now.’