Page 1 of Are We Nearly There Yet?

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One Month Earlier

What’s on your mind, Alice?

2 hrs · London · Friends only

I can’t believe it’s my last night of beingtwenty-nine! Wish me luck for tonight, everyone. I think this evening is going to be truly wild andMESSY.

Checked in at:The Gherkin, London

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Alice Edwards:No one’s reading this, right? BecauseFacebook is over, yes? What is the point of anything, why am I here, what am I doing?

Alice Edwards:But if Facebook is ovah and Twitter is ovah and Instagram is ovah, where am I meant to do all my attention seeking?

Alice Edwards:Why am I still asking questions when no one is listening?

Mark Edwards:Jesus Christ, Alice, commenting on your own status is a new basicbitch low, even for you.

I am thinking about sex. I mean, I’ve had two double gins, soof courseI’m thinking about sex. But it is also because tomorrow I will be thirty, and therefore used up, dried up – unappealing in all theupways – according to everything I hear from the internet. And so I am thinking about sex.

I mentally paw through my phone contacts. Who can I text? Whowould be available for shagging my brains out later tonight but then also pretending to care about me afterwards?

No one.

Honestly, most people in my phonebook are there so I know not to answer when they call.

Across from me at the table, Amelia suddenly barks a happy birthday in my direction. She is a socially awkward barker, always has been. When there is a momentary silenceof any kind at a gathering, she will nervously start barking things. Usually I love that about Amelia, but tonight it makes me want to claw at my own skin. To be honest, right now everything makes me want to claw at my own skin.

I laugh heartily for a second too long, clinking my drink to hers and nodding politely at the beige boyfriend beside her. I can’t remember his name, what is his name?I look around at the sea of plus ones I don’t know around me. Who are all these extra people here at my birthday? When did all my friends couple off?

I stare down at the empty plate in front of me and feel my misery crank up a notch. I suddenly feel intensely disappointed.

Dinner. Dinner? For my thirtieth birthday? A fancy dinner, sure. A fancy dinner in a tall building, but still,dinner.

For the last ten years my friends and I have had the same messy, sticky routine for my birthday, which has gone as follows:

Disgustingpre-game shots over at mine and Eva’s South London flat with our friends Amelia, Karen, Slutty Sarah, Isabelle (when she’s in the country), my brother Mark, and his best friend, Joe, plus any other casual acquaintances I happen to have accumulated thatyear.

Then disgusting pink drinks at bars called, like, Strawberry Moons, or Infernos, or basically anywhere where they play appallingly cheesy nineties music (Ideally East 17 and the Honeyz).

Followed by alie-down on the sticky floor at around 10.15 p.m.

Followed by screaming at each other because we’ve lost a member of our group – usually Eva – and then a bit of angry crying inthe loos.

Followed by finding Eva asleep outside on a pile of bin bags and everyone happy crying, which – from an outsider’s perspective – is not that different from angry crying.

Followed by someone suggesting we get a kebab as the whole lot of us screameating is cheatingand then the arrival of too many Ubers because no one coordinated.

Followed by getting refused entry at a clubfor being too drunk.

Followed by offering to sleep with the bouncers and getting humiliatingly rejected in front of a long queue of people wearing designer clothes.

Followed by getting home en masse andbinge-ordering leopard print maxi dresses fromASOSthat will need returning but will never be returned.

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