Confessions of a Reluctant Recessionista (27 page)

‘Yes!’ she sobbed. Oh, God. This was awful. This was too awful. She’d lost it.

‘Oh, God. What’s happened? Have you miscarried, Ali?’ I asked softly.

‘No!’ she wailed even louder. ‘I just can’t do this. It’s insane! I can’t have a bloody baby. What was I thinking? What the bloody hell was I thinking?’

I sighed. Jake was going to have to wait. As my mother had told me, girlfriends come first. Particularly pregnant, hysterical girlfriends.

I did a noticeable double-take when Ali opened the door. My beautiful, tall, blonde friend, usually so perfectly groomed, looked a state. She was washed out and pale, racoon-eyed from all the crying, her hair scraped back from her face. She was dressed in a grey, holey T-shirt, a pair of boxer shorts and Ugg boots.

‘Do you know how much I weigh?’ she howled at me as I opened the door. ‘Eleven stone. Eleven fucking stone. I can’t believe this. It’s horrible.’ Given that Ali is five foot nine, eleven stone is actually not that bad at all. But since she’s used to being closer to a slender and toned ten stone, her distress was understandable. ‘Eleven fucking stone and I’ve still got twenty weeks to go. I’m going to be an elephant by the time this bloody thing is out of me.’

‘Don’t call it a bloody thing,’ I said. ‘You’ll feel guilty when you meet him or her. And eleven stone is not fat, Ali. In any case, you should just bloody enjoy it. It’s the only time in your life you’re allowed to be fat without being treated like crap by everyone.’

‘Easy for you to say, you skinny cow. And why have you brought champagne? You know I can’t drink. You’re just torturing me, aren’t you?’

I explained about the champagne.

‘Have you quit smoking?’ I asked her.

‘Yes. I’ve quit smoking. I’ve also quit drinking, quit eating sushi, quit running, quit dancing, quit everything. Pregnancy’s rubbish. You can’t do anything fun. Except have sex, of course, but then no one wants to have sex with me looking like this. This is why people have husbands, isn’t it? They
have
to have sex with you when you’re pregnant.’

‘Ali, I’ve no doubt that there are still plenty of men in the world who’d be very happy to sleep with you if you asked nicely,’ I said, giving her a hug. ‘But what’s brought all this on?’ I asked. ‘You seemed fine when we spoke the other day. You were talking about getting that ludicrously expensive buggy – you seemed really excited about everything.’

‘That was before,’ she sniffed.

‘Before what?’

‘Before I knew it was a boy!’ she wailed, and burst into tears again.

I made her a cup of tea and opened the champagne.

‘I thought you weren’t going to find out the sex?’

‘I changed my mind at the last minute.’

‘Boys aren’t that bad.’

‘They’re horrible. They’re difficult and badly behaved. They’re interested in tedious things like sports … Oh, Jesus. I’m going to have to take him to football matches, aren’t I?’

‘Not necessarily,’ I replied. ‘You never know, he might turn out to be gay.’

‘We can but hope.’

‘He’ll be lovely, Al. Can you imagine how good-looking he’ll be – tall and gorgeous, just like you, only with a bit of exotic, ne’er-do-well Frenchman thrown in?’

‘He is going to be a heartbreaker,’ she admitted. I clinked my glass with her mug.

‘He’s going to be amazing.’

We sat on the sofa in front of the fire, talking names.

‘Seth,’ I suggested. ‘Or Nate.’

‘Too American.’

‘Jean-Marc? Olivier?’

‘He’s definitely not having a French name,’ she said. ‘Oh, give us a glass of that, will you? I can’t stand sitting here drinking bloody herbal tea all the time.’ I poured her a small glass of champagne. It was organic, after all. How much harm could it do? ‘He rang today,’ she said.

‘Who rang today? The Frenchman?’

‘Mmm.’ She was looking away from me, but I could tell she was starting to cry again.

‘So that’s what this is all about.’ I put my arm around her shoulders. ‘What did he say?’

‘Well, I told the powers that be at Hamilton Churchill that I’m pregnant. I was going to try to keep it quiet for a bit longer, but I was getting tired of all the remarks about me getting fat. Anyway, someone at work obviously told him that I was pregnant. Still pregnant, I mean.’

‘You hadn’t told him you were keeping it? I mean, keeping him.’

‘No. Why should I? He made it perfectly clear that he wanted nothing to do with me or the baby as soon as I told him about it. I think he just assumed I’d have an abortion, and I never disabused him of the notion.’

‘So what did he say?’

‘He was furious. He said that he expected to be kept informed about what was happening with
his
child.’

‘What a wanker. What a total wanker. What did you say?’

‘I told him to fuck off. The last time we talked about it he didn’t even acknowledge that it was
his
child, so as far as I’m concerned it has bugger all to do with him.’

‘Too right,’ I said, finishing the last of the champagne.

‘What do you think of Joe?’ she asked.

‘After your dad? I think it’s lovely. Joe Vaughn the second. It’s perfect. Have you told your dad, by the way?’ Ali was an only child, the apple of her father’s eye and his only family now.

‘Not yet. I think in some ways he’ll be pleased – he’ll be a such a brilliant granddad – it’s just the part about getting knocked up by a married Frenchman who dumped me the second he found out about the child he’s not going to be turning cartwheels over.’ She sighed and handed me her glass. She’d only had two sips. ‘I’m going to go and see him next weekend.’

‘Do you want me to come along, for moral support?’

‘That would be brilliant, Cass.’

I was going to go straight home after I left Ali’s, but somehow, half an hour later, I found myself standing
on Jake’s doorstep with a six-pack of cider I’d bought from the off-licence. Not my usual taste, but Jake loves the stuff. The bottle of champagne had put me in an excellent mood and I was utterly convinced he’d be thrilled to see me. I rang the doorbell. There was no answer. I rang again. Still nothing. I rang a third time. Someone yanked the door open violently. A middle-aged, female someone, wearing a dressing gown.

‘What on earth is it?’ she demanded.

‘Does … Jake live here?’ I asked, slightly confused.

‘Who? Do you know what time it is?’ She glared at the six-pack of cider in my hand. ‘Are you drunk?’

‘Little bit, actually. I think I may have rung the wrong doorbell. Don’t suppose you know if there’s a Jake in the building, do you?’

‘Flat C,’ she replied with a murderous glare, slamming the door in my face.

I rang the doorbell again. The door was yanked open a second time.

‘That’s B!’ the woman yelled at me. ‘For God’s sake, can’t you read?’

‘It’s very dark out here,’ I mumbled, squinting at the buzzer. That champagne really had gone to my head. The woman pressed the correct doorbell for me. I heard a door open upstairs.

‘Jake!’ the woman called out. ‘Would you come down here? There’s some drunk girl here to see you, she keeps ringing my doorbell.’

Jake leaned over the handrail on the stairs.

‘Sorry, Mrs Blackburn. Would you send her up?’

I climbed the stairs, swaying ever so slightly as I did, wondering if in fact this might have been a bad idea.

‘I believe I may have upset your neighbour,’ I announced, holding up the cans of cider as a peace offering. He didn’t look impressed, but he took the cider from me.

‘Come on in,’ he said.

Jake had a one-bedroom flat on the third floor of a converted Victorian house near Chalk Farm tube. Cat-swinging was out of the question, but it made up in character what it lacked in size, with an original working fireplace in the living room and a little balcony at the back looking out across manicured lawns towards Primrose Hill. The walls were covered with his photographs, the furniture all looked as though it had come from second-hand shops. There was a reassuring lack of anything that looked remotely as though it might have come from IKEA.

‘I’m sorry I cancelled on you last night,’ I said, collapsing onto his battered red leather sofa.

‘That’s OK,’ he said. ‘Do you want one of these? Because I have a feeling you may have had enough.’

‘Mmmm …’ I replied. The sofa really was very comfortable. I stretched out a bit, leaning my head on the armrest.

And then I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew it was three thirty in the morning and I was still on the sofa, covered in a blanket. A pillow had been placed under my head. Oh, God. The memory of the encounter with his downstairs neighbour came
flooding back to me. Oh, God, oh, God. Had I really turned up at his place, drunk and disorderly, and then passed out on his sofa? Why oh why, Cassie? As quietly as I could, I got up, folded up the blanket and searched around for my handbag, which was tricky given that I’d no idea where I put it, and it was pitch dark in the room. Eventually, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I spotted it, over in the corner. In my eagerness to retrieve it, I didn’t notice the magazine rack next to the sofa, over which I tripped. I reached out to steady myself, grabbed onto something in the darkness and brought a standard lamp crashing down on top of me as I fell. Shit.

A figure loomed above me in the darkness.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ Jake asked.

‘I was trying to go home …’ I said weakly, as he pulled the lamp off me. ‘I’m so sorry, Jake. I’ll just get out of your way now.’

He pulled me to my feet.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he laughed, wrapping his arms around me. ‘I don’t want you out of my way. I want you in my way. It’s the middle of the night. Stay.’

‘Really, I should go …’ I started to say, but he shut me up with a kiss. So I stayed.

Cassie Cavanagh
loves Paris in the winter

Ten days before Christmas, the Cavanagh clan (including Celia, Mike and the kids) descended on London for their Christmas shopping trip. They do this every year, and every year I tell them not to. They insist on coming up two Saturdays before Christmas (the final Saturday is always spent wrapping and preparing food) and they insist on going to Oxford Street which, at this time of year, bears a striking resemblance to the ninth circle of hell. I have tried telling them they’d be better off coming in November, but Celia insists that the kids want to see the lights. Actually, I think she likes leaving it so late because it then gives her ample opportunity to moan about how horrible London is.

‘I don’t know how you can stand it, Cassie. Dirty, busy, everyone’s so rude. I honestly don’t see why anyone would want to live here,’ she announced as they arrived en masse, exhausted and fractious, for dinner at my flat on the Saturday evening.

I had been stressing about this dining all day. Usually when they came to London we would all go out somewhere, but I’d decided this year to prove that I could do the domestic goddess thing just as well as Celia could. And just to dial up the stress a little further, I’d invited Jake along. It was a little early in our relationship for meet-the-family, but since my drunken appearance at his flat things had been going so well between us. We’d barely spent a night apart. Plus, to be perfectly honest, I wanted to show him off.

I consulted
Less is More!
for ideas on cheap dinner parties. There was a long section on ‘freegans’, people who scavenge for food in supermarket dustbins. Tempting as it might be to serve my sister something I’d found in a dumpster, I discounted the idea on the grounds that I’d rather die than be caught fishing things out of bins, and decided instead to go for the low-cost menu option: a wholesome and warming French onion soup followed by slow-cooked lamb.

The cooking had gone surprisingly well. I had only managed to scald myself twice, which is pretty good going for me, and I had succeeded in manoeuvring the furniture in our living room so that there would be space for six adults to eat, with the kids sitting at the counter. I was showered, spruced up and ready for anything by the time my family arrived.

Well, almost anything. I kept my cool when Celia launched straight into her diatribe about how horrible London is. I grinned and bore her criticisms of the flat (‘Not very practical for dinner parties, is it? Don’t
know how you cope without a proper dining room’). Somehow I managed. But I started to lose my temper when she expressed exasperation that I had not prepared a separate meal for the kids. ‘French onion soup? For a three-year-old? Honestly, Cassie, you just don’t
think
, do you?

Celia was saved from having a drink dumped in her lap by my doorbell. Jake had arrived. And he was perfect. He chatted to my dad about gardening. He (remarkably convincingly) feigned interest in Mike’s golf handicap. He had a lengthy conversation with my mother about the problems facing teachers today. And he charmed Celia, not so much by saying anything to her, but by spending half an hour playing hide-and-seek with Tom and Rosie, and apparently enjoying it.

Over dinner, my parents announced with great excitement that they were planning a caravanning trip to the Lake District.