Читать книгу What If? - Shari Low - Страница 11

I arrive at Paco’s on Chiswick High Road fifteen minutes late due to a wardrobe crisis – pink pedal pushers are NOT for a woman of my curvatures and complexion – and the Number 57 bus driver refusing to go over twenty miles an hour. Chiswick is the most convenient meeting place, given that Kate lives around the corner, I’m only a few miles away, Jess can hop on a direct train from Westminster and Carol is dating a minted bloke who provides a car and driver to take her wherever she wants to go. As I charge into the packed restaurant, it crosses my mind again that I need to ask the others if they know what happened to Sarah, but I get sidetracked by their cheers.

Kate and Jess have obviously filled Carol in on my day’s deliberations, because in front of them all are glasses full of red liquid – the unmistakable murky hues of the Invaded Vagina. I’ve never asked what’s in it and I’m pretty sure now isn’t the time to find out.

‘Cooper,’ Jess greets me, her Glaswegian accent softened by an overtone of posh London. ‘We were just about to call in a search party.’

There are kisses and hugs all round, before I eventually park myself, desperate to fill them in on my latest episode.

Jess, dressed in a classic navy power suit, takes charge as usual. As a political researcher and (secret) girlfriend of Basil Asquith, MP, she’s used to participating in important meetings and keeping things in order.

‘Right then, who’s got anything major to report this week?’ she asks, her red, chin-length bob not even budging as she scans her audience.

Three hands shoot up, including mine, one almost decapitating a passing waiter. Bloody hell, THREE major news items. Normally we’re lucky if there’s one and we just fill the rest of the time with essential tasks like swapping salacious celebrity gossip. Most of that comes from Carol and Jess, with occasional top-ups from Kate. I wouldn’t come into contact with a celebrity unless I tripped over one when I was putting my bins out. I definitely have the least glamorous life in my circle.

‘Marks out of ten for importance, juiciness and trauma value?’ Jess requests.

‘Four,’ Carol replies, through a perfect, rose pink pout. It would be easy to hate her. She hasn’t gained a pound since we were fourteen, and she still has Cindy Crawford’s easy elegance and killer cheekbones. Even more irritating, she can throw on any old thing and achieve the kind of look that would take me a week and a half to put together.

‘Nine,’ adds Kate.

‘Ten,’ I smile gleefully.

There’s a round of surprised faces. We haven’t had a ten since Jess caught her boyfriend in bed with his allegedly erstwhile wife and proceeded to assault him with a table lamp, causing him to flee his home with only his ministerial red box covering his dignity. It is a complicated relationship. Jess definitely isn’t the kind of woman who would entertain an affair, but Basil’s marriage has been over for years, and he and his wife keep up the façade for the sake of his political career and her social standing. Personally, I think Jess should run a mile from the pair of them, but she loves him, so I try not to judge.

We decide to spill in reverse order, leaving the biggest until last. I can barely contain myself so I sip my cocktail to keep my gob otherwise occupied.

Carol starts with a sigh. ‘Clive wants to take me to Antigua for two weeks.’ Clive is Carol’s latest boyfriend. Private-school educated, great connections, family money and he’s invested well in all sorts of technology that I don’t understand, so two weeks in a luxury resort wouldn’t even make a dent in his petty cash.

I almost splurt my drink across the table. ‘And that’s a problem?’

‘Two weeks! Fourteen whole days and nights of Clive. I mean, he’s very nice and all that, but normally I don’t even hang around long enough to brush my teeth in the mornings. It’s usually meet, expensive dinner somewhere fabulous, his place, orgasm, and then I’m out of there.’

And she’s not kidding. Carol treats her boyfriends like a session at the gym – a bit of a chore, a few grunts and groans, but the rewards are worth it.

We deliberate her dilemma over our starters. It would be easy to look at Carol’s gorgeous, luxury life and think she has it all. Or that she’s aloof and shallow. Actually, she is pretty shallow, but that’s not a surprise in her world. Underneath, though, she’s just the working-class girl from Glasgow, who grew up on a council estate with a mum who worked three jobs to support her family, and who knows that she has a time limit to capitalise on her exquisite appearance. For all her stunning looks, rich boyfriends, flash cars and first-class flights, she’s just like the rest of us –flawed, complicated and still figuring life out. We decide that she should go. After all, how bad could it be? As long as she takes the latest Jilly Cooper, an empty suitcase for shopping trips and calls us on Clive’s phone bill if boredom sets in, she’ll be fine.

We move on to Kate before Carol gets the brochures out and makes us all sick with jealousy.

To my surprise, Kate looks flushed. This is the woman who copes with two kids, a full-time job, a house and husband and all without breaking into a sweat. A minor earthquake couldn’t break Kate’s stride, so if she’s perturbed in any way, then I’ve got a feeling that it’s something huge. I’m not wrong.

‘My cocktail doesn’t have any alcohol in it because I’m, er, well, might be pregnant again.’

There is a stunned silence.

I look to the heavens for inspiration on what to say. Instead, all I see are wooden beams with what looks like dry rot.

I tentatively ask, ‘Is this good?’

She bursts into tears.

My God, Kate never cries. She’s the emotional equivalent of Gibraltar.

‘It’s just so unexpected,’ she blurts. ‘I thought my days of booties and nappy rash were over. But I am happy, honest. Just a bit shell-shocked. It’s really early, just a couple of weeks but my period hasn’t come and I recognise the signs. I’m hormonal. And emotional. One minute I’m over the moon and the next I want to punch everyone I meet. One of Hot N Spicy nearly got a roller brush surgically inserted today.’

‘What does Bruce think about it?’ Carol probes, Antigua now firmly shoved to the back of her mind.

‘Oh, you know Bruce, he’s delighted. He’s already designing an extension and a hydraulic cot. Poor bloody baby will spend half its life with motion sickness.’

We all laugh, including Kate.

She dries her eyes and raises her glass. ‘Here’s to maternity bras and piles.’

We all join in the toast before descending on her with congratulatory cuddles and kisses, much to the bemusement of the surrounding diners.

Our main courses arrive and everyone ignores them, too busy discussing names for the baby and the pros and cons of having another child.

Cons: less money to go round, lack of sleep, more stretch marks and, statistically, more probability that one of the kids will end up with a criminal record (this is Jess’s little chestnut – she’s obviously been researching crime today).

Pros: more presents at Christmas, someone else to visit you when you’re in a care home and, statistically, more probability that one of them will end up running the country (also Jess’s contribution).

I catch Jess’s expression out of the corner of my eye. She’s doing that thing again where she looks happy on the outside, but her eyes tell me she’s miserable on the inside.

‘What’s up?’ I ask her gently. ‘You okay?’

‘Sure. I was just thinking that in my present situation, the chances of me having children are up there with winning the lottery and shagging Jeremy Paxman.’

Jess is in that age-old crap situation which, considering she’s the smartest of us all, is quite difficult to fathom – the unhappily unmarried mistress. If Basil Asquith’s constituents only knew what he is thinking when he advocates corporal punishment (being attached to his antique king-size bed with handcuffs), they may take their vote elsewhere. But Jess is inexplicably attracted to him.

Their affair started four years ago, when she took a post as his researcher, and has motored along, fuelled by endless promises to ‘re-evaluate his marital situation’. Meanwhile, Mrs Asquith poses quite happily with him at their country estate in endless editions of House and Garden. The irony is that Jess is gorgeous (she always reminds me of Julianne Moore), successful and fiercely intelligent. She’s also second only to Kate in being grounded and innately sensible. The whole Basil thing is obviously an episode of diminished responsibility from which she’ll recover at any time.

She visibly shrugs off her melancholy and turns the over-table light so that it shines in my face. ‘Anyway, Cooper, it’s your turn. Spill the story.’

I’d almost forgotten I had something to share.

The others are staring at me in anticipation.

I pause for effect, then reach into my bag and pull out two letters and my purse.

‘This,’ I say placing the first letter down on the table, ‘is my letter of resignation. Goodbye bog rolls.’

I place down the next letter, amused at the three confused faces around the table.

‘And this is a note to my landlord, terminating the lease on my flat.’

Confusion is now approaching astonishment.

‘I’ve decided that by the turn of the century, I’m going to have found the love of my life and the first place I’m going to look is in my past. So these…’ I hold up my credit cards, ‘… are going to take me around the world to find every poor bugger who has ever had the misfortune to have exchanged bodily fluids with me. Ladies, we have a mission. We’re going in and we’re taking no prisoners…’