Page 46 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘Oh, you sweetie,’ she says. ‘You are going to be just fine. Don’t let Sandro be assigned as his physio. He’s a dickhead.’

‘How does that affect whether he’s a good physio or not?’

‘Evil comes down through his fingers.’

‘That sounds like quite a good superpower.’

Janey is frantically trying to joke because she remembers how it saved her. When Colin had gone, for good: the fights, the mediation, the money, Essie blaming her for driving her beloved daddy away – all of it. The only thing that saved her was her mates, with their stupid jokes and prosecco nights and attempts to distract her, so she wouldn’t have to think about it every single second of her life.

‘BUT,’ says Lish suddenly, and they are all so surprised to hear her raise her voice; she never does. Janey stops babbling immediately and there is silence in the little space made by the drawn curtains around the bed. ‘I know he’s going to . . . I know they’re going to do stuff . . . ’

They all murmur in agreement.

‘And you’re right about Sandro, he’s a nob.’

‘Heis!’

‘But . . . I thought . . . I thought . . . ’ Her voice is cracking. ‘I just thought at this age . . . God. I thought we’d have it worked out. That we’d have our careers, and know what we’re doing and have learned a bit about the world and raised our children, God save them, and they’d all be launched . . . ’

Janey makes a sceptical face but the rest of them nod.

‘ . . . and then there’d be somespace, do you know what I mean? Some time. To look around on your life, in the middle of it, and think, well, phew. Here we are. This is cool. This is great. Okay, the menopause is a pain in the fricking arse, but otherwise these should be calm waters now. We’ve done the career, the finding the guy, the babies, the teens . . . now it’s time for us.’

She tears up again.

‘But it never is. It never is. There’s always,alwayssomething. Now it’s my Johnson. But then next it’s going to be my mum, I know it, she’s already forgetting things and she’s four thousand kilometres away and I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about that, because for damn sure my brothers are utterly fricking useless. And one of Emma’s . . . ’

She tails off, obviously not quite ready to share whatever that was. Janey looks at her, surprised. And slightly worried. Lish is the friend who always has everything figured out, who knows who she is, who lives so comfortably, cutting through the world like a steady ship. It worries her suddenly. If even Lish feels this way, what hope is there for any of them?

Lish’s voice is tailing off. ‘I just wanted . . . I just wanted five minutes of fucking peace and quiet,’ she says, in a voice so quiet it is almost a whisper. ‘I take on all the obligations of love – I do. I always have.’

‘But . . . ’ Janey is more flabbergasted by this than by the terrible thing that has befallen Johnson. ‘But you’re always so calm.’

Lish rolls her eyes. ‘Of course I am! I have to be! I’ve seen anxious mothers in childbirth and I’ve seen calm ones, and you know who makes it through the best? I watch terrified mothers, older mothers, IVF mothers leave hospital, fretting over their babies, and guess what – the babies fret right back. Those babies are going to be screaming every night – for years. Youwork hard and project calm out into the world and that’s the only way you’re going to get through.’

Janey nods. It isn’t advice she’s always been able to take, that’s absolutely for sure. But she recognises the truth in it.

‘I thought we’d have longer.’

Lish squeezes Johnson’s wrist again, and his fingers flutter.

‘He is going to recover,’ says Janey.

‘He is,’ says Lish. ‘Very slowly. And then it will be something else. And then something else. And then we’ll be old.’

Janey gives her a hug. ‘You know that chart that always shows women’s happiness peaking and going upwards after sixty?’ she says. ‘We need to cling to that.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ says Lish. ‘That’s because their husbands die. And I really like mine!’ And she bursts into wails again.

21

By the time they’ve made it out of the shop Essie has signed them up for a builder’s account, for which Dwight gets ten per cent off immediately, and he has therefore immediately decided she is some kind of financial wizard.

‘I have seen multi-million-dollar companies go down,’ she says, conscious she is showing off a bit. ‘And tiny ones. Because they couldn’t control their costs. It doesn’t matter how big or small you are.’

‘You sound like Alan Sugar.’

‘So you do watch some TV.’

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