Chapter 52
‘Guess what?’ said Wei.
‘You’re pregnant?’ asked Simone.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘That belly. You look about five months gone.’
She had come to see Wei to return some bits he’d left at Cedar Lodge.
‘It’s like Dolly says. My weaknesses have always been food and men, in that order. I’ve let myself go.’
‘Go where? On a fast train to type two diabetes?’
‘Who are you to speak? Those bags under your eyes are so black I thought the bin men had forgotten their collections this week.’
‘That’s a bit laboured. Three out of ten for effort though,’ she said.
‘I’ll never reach your standards, great high priestess of put-downs.’
‘Just as well. We’d only fight like cat and overweight dog.’
‘Miaow!’
‘Oi, that’s my line,’ she said. ‘Seriously though. What?’
He sat down on his stool. ‘My auntie called.’
‘Did she want her hairstyle back?’
‘Put your claws away for a second and lie down. I’ll give you a nice head massage.’
‘I’d love to, but I’m short on cash. I only came to drop this round.’ She put the bag on the side.
‘I’ve not got anyone in for half an hour. Come on.’
She’d gladly take a freebie.
‘So why did your aunt call?’
Wei’s fingers went to work on her temples. ‘My mum wants to speak to me.’
This was big news.
‘Why didn’t your mum just call?’
‘She didn’t know how I’d feel about it.’
‘How do you feel about it?’ She peeked at him. She didn’t have to ask; his eyes were wide like a child’s. He was clearly delighted. ‘What happened?’
‘She went to a conference in Shanghai. Led by the first woman to come out publicly as the mother of a gay son. My auntie went with her. She attended a free counselling session and another woman described how she’d already lost her son once when she found out he was gay, but that didn’t mean she needed to lose him forever.’
Tears pooled in his eyes and spilt over onto her face.
‘Apparently, my mum cried for three hours,’ he choked. ‘And then told my auntie she felt the same.’ He wiped his nose. ‘Sorry. How unprofessional.’
‘And how does David feel about all this?’
‘He did want to kill her. But then I told him she makes the best spring rolls, so now he’s looking at sofa beds for when she comes to stay.’ His face creased into more joyous tears.
‘Oh Wei. I’m so happy for you. Everyone deserves to have a shitty mum in their life.’ She got off the bed and gave him a hug. ‘And what about everything she did? Are you ready to forgive her?’
‘Of course. She couldn’t help it. There’s so much stigma around being gay in my culture. I’m sure if I was my mum, with her background and upbringing, I’d have behaved in the same way.’
‘You sound like Jasper.’
‘And how is Gandhi?’
Her belly still did funny things at the mention of his name. She was insanely happy. It was like her brain, or maybe her heart, had a ‘reserved’ section in it this whole time and it was just waiting for its VIP guest’s arrival for the party to begin.
‘We’re now officially boyfriend and girlfriend!’
Wei fluttered his fingers near his eyes. He was going to cry again. ‘How does that feel?’
‘Like finding the perfect pair of jeans.’ Her phone pinged. ‘Hang on, that might be him.’
Whenever they weren’t together, they were messaging. A lot. But it wasn’t Jasper, it was Tony. She was wondering when he’d be in touch.
Well played.
What was?
A message popped back almost immediately.
Don’t act the innocent with me.
She sent back the wide-eyed emoji face.
Ollie’s gone.
Oh no. What happened?
Like you don’t already know.
Okay, so maybe she’d taken the footage they’d recorded of Ollie calling Wolfe the c-word, edited it down, put it on a loop, and then sent it to Wolfe anonymously using a prepaid SIM card.
It was him or the account.
Good call.
Want a job?
Of course she wanted a job. She was nursing a credit card balance the size of a small country’s national debt.
Hmm.
With the promotion.
She tapped out a message.
I wouldn’t come back to work for you if you were the last man on Earth. I would rather eat the contents of my food bin than spend a second longer in that hell hole. I can only hope that your ample years of self-neglect means that, as I text, an embolism is forming in your clotted arteries, ready to unleash a stroke of epic proportions in your disgusting, diseased, haemorrhoid of a body.
And then she deleted it. She was better than that. Instead, she just texted no. It was incredibly empowering.
Name your price.
She was done negotiating with emotional terrorists. She didn’t even bother to respond.
‘I need to get a job,’ she said to Wei.
‘You should do your own events. That last thing you did was amazing.’
‘I’ll just set up my own agency, shall I?’
‘Why not?’
‘Because there are hundreds of event agencies out there. To be successful you need an angle. Something different. Something no one else is offering.’
‘So come up with one.’
‘Yeah, like it’s that eas?—’
A thought scuttled across her brain like a mouse.
‘—y. Hang on a minute. I have an idea.’
‘What is it?’
‘Shh! I need to get it down.’ She picked up her phone and began to make copious notes.
The front doorbell rang.
‘Alright, Rockefeller. You’re going to have to plan your world domination elsewhere. That’s my next client.’
She jumped off the bed and made for the door, but then turned back. ‘Wei. Crazy question, but you and David wouldn’t like to have dinner at mine at some point, would you? With Jasper?’
‘Aww. At this rate you’ll be asking me to be a bridesmaid at your wedding!’
‘You’d need to lose a few pounds first,’ she said.
He launched a packet of cotton wool at her. ‘Isn’t love meant to make you softer?’
‘You’re thinking of body lotion.’
‘Get out,’ he said. ‘Send me some dates. We’d love to come.’