It Had to Be You (16 page)

‘All the interesting women have children over forty.’ Nic was still furiously typing away on her phone. ‘Look at Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Julianne Moore …’

‘It’s all right for you two, you’re career women! I wish female emancipation had never been invented. All I want to do is marry a nice man who will look after me and we can move to the country, and I’ll stay at home looking after our children.’

‘I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,’ Nic told her.

‘But I did say it!’ Poppet cried. ‘It’s what I want! Why are women made to feel our worth is only measured by salary zeros and how many glass ceilings we have to smash at work? Dammit, why did Matt Damon go and have kids with that Italian bitch!’

‘Pops, I don’t think it’s healthy to spend so much time on Mumsnet,’ Lizzy said. ‘Look how it winds you up.’

‘I can’t help it! Everyone is settling down except me! Have I done something terrible in a previous life and this is God’s way of punishing me?’ She looked on the verge of tears. ‘I want that conversation about whether it’s still the done thing to have favours so much it actually hurts.’

‘Really? Is that what you really want?’ Nic finally put her phone down. ‘You think ending up with six crystal wine goblets in your cupboard and a Jamie Oliver chef’s knife is a sign that you’ve made it?’

‘I’m not sure I’d have crystal goblets, but—’

‘Poppet,’ Nic interrupted. ‘It’s all a load of bollocks. Do you really think Emma Summers and every other stupid cow who’s got engaged this year has really done it because they’ve found “The One”?’

Poppet opened her mouth but Nic put a hand up and silenced her.

‘People like Emma Summers aren’t getting married because they’re in
love
! Do you think that when Emma Summers was a little girl she dreamed of marrying a guy with a facial tic and beard dandruff? Everyone’s in such a panic about this stupid self-imposed deadline that they’re grabbing anyone and anything they can. Someone needs to blow a bloody great whistle and shout: “Will everyone just STOP? Bridezilla over there! Do you
really
want to live out your days with a guy who wears utility clothing at the weekend like he’s some sort of suburban Bear Grylls? And you in the corner! Rattling round with all that folic acid inside you! Do you actually want kids, or are you just going along with it because you think you have to? Are you too scared to admit that – shock horror – there might be other options out there?”’ Breathlessly defiant, Nic sat back. ‘You see it every day across the land: dead-eyed couples in restaurants and traffic jams with bugger all to say to each other. These fools aren’t settling down, they’re just
settling
!’

‘Is there a heart that beats in there, Nic?’ Poppet said stiffly. ‘Only sometimes I do wonder.’ Then she went off to sulk in the loo.

Nic slumped against the banquette. Even for her it had been quite a diatribe.

‘Are you OK, hun?’ Lizzy asked.

Nic sighed. ‘I know I was harsh on Pops but sometimes I just want to shake her. She doesn’t need to worry. As if someone isn’t going to snap her up.’

Her friend was looking really tired. ‘Is Simon giving you loads of hassle?’ Lizzy said.

‘Nothing I can’t handle.’ Nic pulled her hand over her face. ‘Maybe I just need to drink less.’

Poppet came back from the loo wearing the wounded expression of a puppy whose tail had just been accidentally shut in the door by its owner.

‘I’m sorry, Pops,’ Nic told her. ‘I didn’t mean to go off on one.’

‘Other people are allowed to have points of view. You can’t always shout them down just because they don’t agree with you.’

‘I know. Will you forgive me? I promise to be meek and amenable from now on. I’ll even send Emma Summers a congratulatory helium balloon if it will make you love me again.’

Poppet couldn’t stay cross if she tried. ‘Of course I still love you,’ she told Nic. ‘And I was thinking when I was on the toilet, maybe you
have
got a point about the beard dandruff!’

It was Saturday and the day of the Santa’s Little Helper launch. Lizzy had planned to leave London by 8 a.m. at the latest, but with various Christiana issues and Antonia’s Abel & Cole delivery turning up late, it was nearly ten by the time they got on the road. Lizzy had already had five irate calls from Brian Baxter, and was starting to sweat profusely.

‘You handle stress really badly,’ Antonia told her. ‘Have you thought about transcendental meditation?’

Lizzy thought about punching her boss’s lights out, then lurched forward as the Range Rover screeched to a halt at a set of red traffic lights. There was a playing field on the left, where two teams of men were playing five-a-side football.

‘Aren’t they revolting?’

‘Who?’ Lizzy sighed.

‘Men! Look at them with their skinny little legs and fat bellies, chasing a ball around. Emotionally, they never progress beyond the age of fourteen. Women don’t even start channelling their inner goddess until the age of forty.’ Antonia drummed her fingernails on the steering wheel. ‘And the tragedy is that we have to endure those cretins for the rest of our lives just because we needed to get sperm out of them.’

‘I don’t know if that’s true about
all
men.’ Not that Lizzy was feeling that hopeful about the other sex right now.

‘Ha! You wait until you have kids.’ Antonia rammed the car into first gear. ‘Not that future generations will suffer the same hardships that we have. In evolutionary terms women are becoming by far the stronger species.’ She dangerously overtook a minibus with ‘Sunset Care Home’ written on it. ‘You mark my words. In a hundred years’ time the modern male will have died out and we’ll all be getting our babies from Scandinavian sperm banks!’

Fortunately Antonia drove like the secret lovechild of Jenson Button and The Roadrunner. With the Range Rover bulldozing everything out of its path they reached the outskirts of the Buckinghamshire town in barely an hour. Antonia had spent most of the journey on the hands-free to her husband telling him where he could find various things for Christiana and discussing intimate healthcare issues. Lizzy now knew more about Erik’s ingrown hair problem to ever feel comfortable looking him in the eye again.

At least it was a lovely day for the launch; the sun beating down and blue skies stretching out like a giant smear of paint. They should get a good turnout, especially with the mince-pie ice cream that Lizzy had persuaded a local dairy to make for the occasion. Even Antonia had agreed it had been a masterstroke.

The local radio had been on since they’d left the motorway. An advert for ‘Carl Pitter master carpet-fitter’ seemed to be on a thirty-second loop.

‘Why are we listening to this shit?’ Antonia asked. ‘It’s giving me a migraine.’

‘They’ve promised to give us a trail.’ Lizzy looked at the clock on the dashboard. ‘It should be on any moment …’

The music faded out. ‘That was a slice of the sultry Shania Twain for a sultry day! In local news, it’s the Shane Castle summer festival today, with fun for kids and parents alike, so get yourself down there. And tomorrow local entrepreneurs Bernard and Deirdre Baxter are launching their new herbal drink Satan’s Little Helper in the market square.’

‘It’s SANTA’S Little Helper and it’s TODAY!’ Lizzy howled. ‘I can’t believe this!’ How many times had she emailed over the details?

‘Well, there’s clearly been a cock-up somewhere,’ Antonia huffed. ‘You’re on your own when we see Brian and Debbie.’

Sure enough, Brian was waiting for them looking like a scowling, hairy-chested relation of the Mario Brothers. ‘Did you just hear the radio? They didn’t get anything right. Did you send them the wrong press release or what? And they made me and Debs sound like a pair of dozy amateurs!’

‘Lizzy is doing her best to rectify the situation,’ Antonia breathed. ‘I can only offer my sincerest apologies, you know this would have never happened under my watch.’

Lizzy had been on hold to the radio station for the past fifteen minutes. ‘Yes! Hello?’ A loud
beeeeep
pierced her ear as she was cut off.

Antonia conveniently swanned off to say hello to Debbie, and Brian crossed his arms. ‘This is not what I pay you for.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lizzy said. ‘I’m just as annoyed as you are.’

‘I doubt that. And what time do you call this? Me and Debs have been here since 8 a.m. She’s had to bring her mum along and the old dear is about to conk out with dehydration.’

Lizzy looked at the grey-haired lady dozing on a folding chair under one of the Santa’s Little Helper themed umbrellas. She didn’t look that well.

‘I have to say, it’s all looking brilliant!’ she said heartily.

It was the exaggeration of the century. The stall with its mistletoe bunting and flashing Christmas tree looked completely incongruous on a swelteringly hot August day. Trays of sweaty mince pies sat between carefully assembled pyramids of Santa’s Little Helper bottles. A vat of mulled wine was bubbling away ferociously in the background.

‘Where’s the ice-cream man?’ Lizzy asked.

‘He’s just called,’ Brian said gloomily. ‘Their generator has broken down in the heat and all the ice cream has melted.’

‘What? Why has no one rung me?’

‘Probably because you’ve been on the bloody phone to the radio station.’ Brian shook his head. ‘Not what I pay you for, Lizzy, you’re meant to be on call twenty-four/seven.’

They gazed across the deserted square. ‘Where are all the press?’ he asked plaintively. ‘I thought you said you had loads of interviews lined up.’

‘I’ve just left them all another voicemail.’ Lizzy was starting to get a terrible feeling about the whole thing.

Antonia had disappeared on the pretext of making an urgent phone call, so Lizzy had been left to man the stall with Debbie Baxter. Instead of the green elf hat and sash that Lizzy was wearing, Debbie had gone off-plan with fish-net tights and a satin minidress trimmed with white fur. She’d already been called a prostitute by a young mum pushing a Bugaboo past. So much for catering to the female market.

A group of youths had been loitering for a while, spitting on to the cobbles and making derogatory comments about Debbie’s chest. One of them sidled up to Lizzy.

‘How much?’

‘It’s retailing at £9.99 but we’re giving away free samples today. It’s packed with a blend of seven different herbal ingredients …’ Lizzy reeled off the sales pitch.

‘So what does it do for you?’

His accent was a bizarre hybrid of Home Counties meets ghetto Brooklyn. ‘
Do
for you?’ Lizzy asked confusedly.

The boy sucked his teeth at her. ‘It’s a new legal high, right? This place is well boring, we need something to liven it up.’

‘Sod off, you little druggie!’ Debbie hissed. ‘Or I’ll call your mum!’

Ten minutes later a police car wailed into the square. Two officers who looked like they should have been sitting their A levels sprang importantly out of the car.

‘We’ve had a tip-off someone is selling controlled substances,’ the shorter one announced. ‘Can you tell me what’s going on?’

It took a further fifteen minutes of explanation, plus a rigorous testing session by the officers, to determine that Santa’s Little Helper was legitimate.

‘We’ve just been up the summer festival at Shane Castle, the place is packed,’ the taller one told Lizzy. ‘Not a very good turnout here, is it? You should have got the local radio to give it a mention.’

An hour later their only customers had been the police officers, a couple of elderly women and a bored traffic warden who’d wandered over to see what was going on.

‘This is a fucking disaster!’ Antonia hissed. ‘Do something!’

‘I am trying!’ Lizzy was attempting to get hold of all the press who were meant to be turning up, but she was still getting a barrage of voicemails. The one journalist she had managed to get through to had clearly been pissed and had told Lizzy that he’d forgotten that it was his parents’ silver wedding anniversary. It was a blatant lie. The truth was no one in their right mind wanted to spend a scorching hot weekend at the end of August standing round a town centre drinking mulled wine.

‘Tweet about it!’ Antonia instructed Lizzy.

‘I have already!’

‘Do another one then! Say there’s free food and booze for the next thirty minutes and that people had better get their arses down here!’

Lizzy did as she was told, in a slightly less rude manner. ‘We’ve had a retweet already! And another one.’

‘You see?’ Antonia said smugly. ‘All it needed was a little lateral thinking.’

Not long after a camper van rolled into the square, followed by more camper vans and what looked like a 1960s school bus painted in various shades of the rainbow.

The convoy drew up next to the stall. A young guy with dreadlocks stuck his head out of the window. ‘Is this the free festival?’ he asked Lizzy.

‘Free festival?’ What was he talking about?

The man waved his phone at her. ‘People have been tweeting about a party with free food and drink.’

More vehicles poured in. The market square started to resemble a summer solstice at Glastonbury. Lithe, suntanned men wandered round in the sun with plastic glasses of mulled wine. Rugs had been laid out on the ground, off which people were selling jewellery and incense candles. Someone else had set up a yoga flash mob outside Caffè Nero. Groups of local children were staring goggle-eyed at the exotic, tattooed creatures in front of them.

Brian Baxter had just been asked if he wanted his astrological chart doing and was about to blow a gasket. ‘We’re not running a “Hippies Reunited” convention here! Do something!’

‘These people are fucking disgusting!’ Antonia whispered violently. ‘Get rid of them, Lizzy!’

So much for them all being children of the universe. Lizzy went up to a young woman who was sitting on the kerb playing with an adorable baby. She smiled at Lizzy.

‘Are you one of the organizers? It’s such a lovely idea to bring us all together.’

Lizzy shut her mouth and bid a hasty retreat. Antonia could do her own dirty work.

To make matters even worse, the local press then decided to turn up, probably after hearing something untoward was going down on the market square. A local reporter cornered Lizzy on the cobbles.